While spaghetti might have a diameter of a couple of millimetres and capelli d’angelo (angel hair) is around 0.8 mm, the thinnest known pasta to date is thought to be su filindeu (threads of God), which is made by hand in Sardinia, Italy, and is about 0.4 mm in diameter.
That is, however, until researchers in the UK created spaghetti coming in at a mindboggling 372 nanometres (0.000372 mm) across (Nanoscale Adv. doi:10.1039/D4NA00601A).
About 200 times thinner than a human hair, the “nanopasta” is made using a technique called electrospinning, in which the threads of flour and liquid were pulled through the tip of a needle by an electric charge.
“To make spaghetti, you push a mixture of water and flour through metal holes,” notes Adam Clancy from University College London (UCL). “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.”
While each individual strand is too thin to see directly with the human eye or with a visible light microscope, they used the threads to form a mat of nanofibers about two centimetres across, creating in effect a mini lasagne sheet.
The researchers are now investigating how the starch-based nanofibers could be used for medical purpose such as wound dressing, for scaffolds in tissue regrowth and even in drug delivery. “We want to know, for instance, how quickly it disintegrates, how it interacts with cells, and if you could produce it at scale,” says UCL materials scientist Gareth Williams.
But don’t expect to see nanopasta hitting the supermarket shelves anytime soon. “I don’t think it’s useful as pasta, sadly, as it would overcook in less than a second, before you could take it out of the pan,” adds Williams. And no-one like rubbery pasta.
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