Drawing a single nanofibre over hundreds of microns

We demonstrate that the limits of drawing of fibre can be pushed down to nanometre dimensions. By a process similar to dry-spinning, nanofibres can be drawn with ultimate dimensions comparable with the ones of single-wall carbon nanotubes. An important difference with tubes is that our nanofibres are produced one at a time. It is also shown that the nanofibre can be positionned precisely on a surface during fabrication, and can then be cut or manipulated by an AFM tip.