The arena file for the thinnest pasta has been shattered, though the unusual, slim noodles are better suited to injure dressings than the dinner desk.

From white flour, researchers made starch-properly off nanofibers which is probably going to be about 370 nanometers thick, on common — or about two hundredths the thickness of a human hair. The nano-noodles will likely be old in biodegradable bandages, chemist Adam Clancy and colleagues reported October 30 in Nanoscale Advances.

To assassinate the noodle “dough,” the scientists blended the flour with formic acid, a liquid that helps uncoil the long starch molecules in the flour. “Essentially, whereas you might perchance prefer to cook starch, then you definately utilize water and warmth to atomize up the tight packing of starch,” says Clancy, of College College London. “We bag that chemically with formic acid. So we effectively predicament it as any other of cooking it.”

The researchers fastidiously warmed the dough to give it the stunning consistency. Then, by a strategy known as electrospinning, they old an electric charge to pull the combination thru a needle and onto a plate about a centimeters away (SN: 4/4/06). The starch molecules tangle with each and every varied as they go the needle, forming a continuous jet. Because the jet flies thru the air, the formic acid evaporates, leaving a skinny fiber in the support of. After about 30 seconds, the fiber kinds a skinny mat on the plate.

Mats manufactured from starchy nanofibers normally absorb pores which is probably going to be large satisfactory to let water molecules thru however too small for bacteria to enter, making them pretty alternate choices for bandages and injure dressings. Previous analysis has made electrospun mats from pure starch, however the path of of extracting that starch from plant matter is energy- and water-intensive. The unusual watch exhibits that the extraction isn’t strictly predominant.

“Within the event you put it to use for bandages, it doesn’t in truth matter that there’s cellulose and protein there,” Clancy says.

For the explanation that fibers are manufactured from dried flour, they’ll be labeled as pasta. That makes them the thinnest pasta on file — roughly a thousandth the width of su filindeu, a form of pasta about half of the width of angel hair noodles that’s completely handmade by steady one family in the town of Nuoro, Italy.

But is Clancy’s nanopasta fit to be eaten? “I without a doubt hope so,” he says.