The result, they claim in a paper that will appear this month in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, is a nanofibre material with an extremely high ratio of surface-area to volume.

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But as an object gets smaller, the ratio between its surface area and its volume rises.

ECONOMIST: Small wonders

The family of these materials includes much-touted, carbon-based members such as graphene and nanotubes, and are notable in part for their surface area-to-weight ratio.

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