Researchers have created the world’s thinnest spaghetti which is about 200 times thinner than a human hair.
The pasta is not intended to be a new food but was created because these extremely fine strands of material – called nanofibers – could have a number of important medical uses.
Among the uses for the nanofibers are to make bandages to help wound healing – they allow water and moisture in but keep bacteria out; as scaffolding for bone regeneration; and for drug delivery.
However, UCL-led researchers say it is more environmentally friendly to create the strands directly from a starch-rich ingredient like flour, which is the basis for pasta.
Nanofibers made of starch – produced by most green plants – rely on starch being extracted from plant cells and purified, and the process needs a lot of energy and water.
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 the new study, published in Nanoscale Advances, the scientists 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.
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.
That pasta is estimated at about 400 microns wide – 1,000 times thicker than the new creation.
The newly created nanopasta formed a mat of nanofibers about 2cm across, and so is visible, but each individual strand is too thin to be clearly captured by any form of visible light camera or microscope.
Co-author Professor Gareth Williams, UCL School of Pharmacy, said: “Nanofibers, such as those made of starch, show potential for use in wound dressings as they are very porous.
“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.”
He added: “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.”
The researchers used flour and formic acid to make the pasta, rather than water, as the formic acid breaks up the giant stacks of spirals that make up starch – cooking has the same effect on the starch as the formic acid, breaking it up to make the pasta digestible.
The researchers also had to carefully warm up the mixture for several hours before slowly cooling it back down to make sure it was the right consistency.