The world's thinnest spaghetti, about 200 times thinner than a human hair, has been created by a UCL-led research team.
The spaghetti is not intended to be a new food but was created because of the wide-ranging uses that extremely thin strands of material, called nanofibers, have in medicine and industry.
Nanofibers made of starch - produced by most green plants to store excess glucose - are especially promising and could be used in bandages to aid wound healing (as the nanofiber mats are highly porous, allowing water and moisture in but keeping bacteria out), as scaffolding for bone regeneration and for drug delivery. However, they rely on starch being extracted from plant cells and purified, a process requiring much energy and water.
A more environmentally friendly method, the researchers say, is to create nanofibers directly from a starch-rich ingredient like flour, which is the basis for pasta.
In a new paper in Nanoscale Advances, the team describe making spaghetti just 372 nanometres (billionths of a metre) across using a technique called electrospinning, in which threads of flour and liquid are pulled through the tip of a needle by an electric charge. The work was performed by Beatrice Britton, who carried out the study as part of her master's degree in chemistry at UCL.
Co-author Dr Adam Clancy (UCL Chemistry) said: "To make spaghetti, you push a mixture of water and flour through metal holes. 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."
In their paper, the researchers describe the next thinnest known pasta, called su filindeu ("threads of God"), made by hand by a pasta maker in the town of Nuoro, Sardinia. This pasta lunga ("long pasta") is estimated at about 400 microns wide - 1,000 times thicker than the new electrospun creation, which, at 372 nanometres, is narrower than some wavelengths of light.
