Scientists have recently created the finest “spaghetti” in the world. However, these are not intended for consumption but could well revolutionize certain areas like medicine.
Nanofibers 200 times finer than hair
Scientific inventions can sometimes be quite bizarre, but most of the time they are very useful. Researchers at University College London recently announced they had created the world’s thinnest spaghetti, but these are far from being intended to be enjoyed with tomato sauce.
Technically speaking, these nanofibers are not actually spaghetti but rather fibers made from starch. These have a diameter of only 372 nanometerswhich means that they are 200 times finer than a human hair et 1000 times thinner than the finest hand-made spaghettithe “su filindeu” or “sons of god”.
These starch fibers were obtained by electrospinningmore precisely by pulling threads of flour and liquid through the tip of a needle using an electrical charge. Although scientists already knew how to make such nanofibers from starch, this technique is nevertheless much less expensive from an environmental point of view.
What can these starch nanofibers be used for?
Firstly, as mentioned previously, this production technique is less expensive than those used until today. Indeed, the manufacture of this type of nanofibers required a large quantity of water and energy, particularly to purify starch. Here, the chemists behind these famous nanofibers simply use white flour and formic acidwhich has the power to break the layers of helix stuck together making up the starch.
These nanofibers present revolutionary potential for the medical field. These can for example, according to the researchers, be used in dressings because they are very porous. Also, these starch nanofibers are being studied to be used as scaffolding to regenerate tissuebecause they mimic the extracellular matrix, a network of proteins and other molecules that cells build for support.
These microscopic spaghetti would also have other uses in other fields according to the chemists who developed them. For example, they cited uses in la nanofiltration or even for carbon supercapacitor electrodes.
Another significant advantage is that the material used, starch, is on the one hand abundant, this being the second largest source of biomass on Earthbut also biodegradablein other words it can be broken down in the body without inducing a risk of contamination for the subject concerned. However, the real properties of these nanofibers remain to be clarified in future studies. For example, how quickly do they break down in a body? Is it possible to produce them on a large scale using this new manufacturing technique…?
Sources : Futura-Sciences/Royal Society of Chemistry
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