New technique produces superlong nanowires

Science News : Scientists have spun a multitude of high-tech materials into bundles of superfine nanowires that are more than 1000 meters long, writes Rachel Ehrenberg for Science News. Although trimming big, bulky materials down to nanosize has proven difficult in the past, Mehmet Bayindir of the Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology at Bilkent University in Turkey and colleagues have succeeded in doing so with a solid rod of material wrapped in polymer. They heated the rod, drew it out in a long micrometers-thick thread, cut that into 15-cm lengths, consolidated the lengths into a bundle, and heated and spun that into even finer thread. Not only are the wires they produced exceedingly long, they are also homogeneous. The new technique, reported online in Nature Materials, produces uniform, orderly arrays of gossamer-thin materials that could have broad use in sensors, energy-harvesting devices, and medical diagnostics.