Materials scientists in France said that they had made highly-conductive plastic wires on the nanoscale, an invention with potential for mobile devices, computing and solar energy.
Just a few billionths of a metre across, the fibres are light, inexpensive, flexible and easy to handle, in contrast to carbon nanotubes, the team said in the journal Nature Chemistry.
The wires are derivatives of man-made molecules called triarylamines that have been used for decades in photocopiers.
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