Cited research: Nano Lett. doi:10.1021/nl100824d (2010)

Polymer nanofibres can be spun into free-standing, hollow cylinders that look as if they might have been shaped on a tiny pottery wheel. Ho-Young Kim at Seoul National University, L. Mahadevan at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and their co-workers used an electric field to tease a nanometre-scale jet of polyethylene oxide solution from a capillary tube. The jet dried in mid-air and, in less than a second, coiled up into a spool a few micrometres in diameter (pictured) as it hit a sharp stainless steel tip 2 millimetres below the capillary tube.

Such structures could be used in nanometre-scale magnets, bioscaffolds or nanochannels, the researchers suggest. R.V.N.

Credit: AM. CHEM. SOC.