As electronic devices continue to shrink to meet the demand for pocket sized and wearable technology, scientists are working to develop the minute components that make them work and a team in the School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham have developed a new approach for the preparation of a coaxial cable around 50,000 times narrower than the width of a human hair.

This miniscule wire – comprising a carbon nanotube located inside a boron nitride nanotube – can be produced on a preparative scale and may represent an important step towards the miniaturisation of electronic devices.

The multi-national team of experts from the UK and Hungary, was jointly led by Andrei Khlobystov, a Professor of Nanomaterials and Director of the University of Nottingham’s Nanoscale and Microscale Research Centre (nmRC), and Graham Rance, a Research Fellow in Nanomaterials Characterisation at the nmRC, who possess complementary expertise in the synthesis and characterisation of carbon nanomaterials. The study entitled ‘Growth of carbon nanotubes inside boron nitride nanotubes by coalescence of fullerenes: toward the world’s smallest coaxial cable’ has been published in Small Methods, a new journal focussed on cutting-edge developments in experimental approaches to the production of nano- and microscale materials.