It looks like paper. It feels like paper. It's even made like
paper. But this paper, made from metal nanowires, can sit in
water for months and never get wet, while soaking up to 20 times
its weight in oil. "You can even print on it and cut it just
like paper," said Jing Kong, a researcher at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and co-author of a study on the paper
appearing in this month's issue of Nature Nanotechnology. The
new nanopaper is designed to help clean oil spills, even
difficult emulsions, and other environmental toxins. The
nanopaper is made from solid potassium manganese oxide nanowires
instead of cellulose, the main ingredient of normal paper. Each
nanowire is about 20 nanometers in diameter, and together they
naturally clump together to form strands several centimeters
long. After being dissolved in water, the nanometers dry rapidly
to create a sheet of nanopaper. "The process of making the
nanopaper is same one you would use to make [normal] paper,"
said Francesco Stellacci, a study co