A team of UK chemists at University College London (UCL) have created the world’s thinnest spaghetti, thought to be 200 times thinner than a human hair and narrower than a few wavelengths of light. The study, published in nanoscale advancesSays new brand of pasta has broken the previous record for thinnest pasta lunga Up to about a thousand times. Because each individual strand was so narrow that it could not be clearly captured by any type of visible light camera or microscope, the researchers used a “scanning electron microscope”, scanning the mat with a focused beam of electrons. and created an image based on the pattern of electrons that are deflected”
‘Almost-invisible’ pasta is not intended to be a new food as it will cook in under a second. It was created because the extremely fine fibers it contains, called nanofibers, may have important medical uses.
The team achieved the desired result by using a technique called ‘electrospinning’ to create nanofibers with a diameter of 372 nanometers (one billionth of a meter) from the flour mixture. They used flour and formic acid instead of water because formic acid breaks down the helices (giant stacks of spirals) that make up starch.
Additionally, they had to heat the mixture for several hours before slowly cooling it to ensure it was the right consistency.
“To make spaghetti, you push a mixture of water and flour through a metal hole. In our study, we did the same, except we pulled our flour mixture with an electrical charge. It’s literally spaghetti But very small,” said co-author Dr. Adam Clancy.
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use of nanofiber
The formed nanofibers are hydrophilic, and can be used in biodegradable, biosourced nanofiber applications, such as next-generation bandaging, or as a cheap, green replacement for starch in carbonized supercapacitor electrodes.
“Nanofibers, such as those made from starch, show potential for use in wound dressings because they are very porous. Additionally, nanofibers are being explored for use as a scaffold to regrow tissue. is, because they mimic the extra-cellular matrix – a network of proteins and other molecules that cells make to support themselves,” said co-author Professor Gareth Williams.
