This dainty-looking floral display is actually a field of thousands of hardy carbon nanotubes–carbon atoms arranged in tough cylinders, each just 20 to 30 nanometers in diameter. Each petal consists of horizontal nanotubes and each center, of vertical ones. The daisies demonstrate a new nanofabrication technique devised by Pulickel Ajayan, Ganapathiraman Ramanath, and their colleagues at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.
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