The world’s thinnest spaghetti, about 200 times thinner than a human hair, has been created by a team of UK chemists.
The team at University College London (UCL) used a technique called “electrospinning” to create the nanofibres as part of master’s student Beatrice Britton’s research.
“To make spaghetti, you push a mixture of water and flour through metal holes,” said the study’s co-author Dr Adam Clancy.
“In our study, we did the same except we pulled our flour mixture through with an electrical charge. It’s literally spaghetti but much smaller.”
The scientists are not intending their nanopasta to be eaten, if anything because it would overcook in “under a second”, according to one of the paper’s authors.
Instead, it is a useful experiment for creating environmentally-friendly nanofibres for use in healthcare.
“Nanofibers, such as those made of starch, show potential for use in wound dressings as they are very porous,” said co-author Professor Gareth Williams.
“In addition, nanofibers are being explored for use as a scaffold to regrow tissue, as they mimic the extra-cellular matrix – a network of proteins and other molecules that cells build to support themselves.”
Nanofibres are usually created by extracting starch from plant cells and then purifying it, which requires a lot of energy and water, according to the team at UCL.
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Using starch from an ingredient like flour could make the process more environmentally friendly.
“Purifying starch requires lots of processing,” said Dr Clancy. “We’ve shown that a simpler way to make nanofibers using flour is possible.”
The next thinnest known pasta, called su filindeu, or Threads of God, was made by hand by a pasta maker in the town of Nuoro, Sardinia, and is just 400 microns wide.
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However, su filindeu is thought to be 1,000 times thicker than the new electrospun creation, which is narrower than some wavelengths of light.
Each individual strand of the new nanopasta is so thin it cannot be clearly captured by any form of visible light microscope, so they were measured with a scanning electron microscope.
