Table Salt Unlocks Breakthrough in Metallic Nanotube Production for Advanced Electronics

An international team of researchers has successfully created niobium sulfide metallic nanotubes with stable and predictable properties for the first time, marking a significant achievement in advanced materials science, according to Mirage News on November 17, 2025. This groundbreaking development was surprisingly enabled by the addition of ordinary table salt during the growth process.

This innovation holds immense promise for revolutionizing various high-tech sectors. The newly developed nanomaterial could lead to the creation of faster electronics, highly efficient superconductor wires, and pave the way for future quantum computers, as reported by Penn State on November 6, 2025.

The crucial role of common table salt in this process was an unexpected twist, as noted by study author Slava V. Rotkin, a professor at Penn State's Materials Research Institute. He likened the addition of salt to "alchemy," fundamentally changing how the material formed.

Achieving stable and predictable properties in metallic nanotubes has been a long-sought goal in nanomaterial research. This breakthrough addresses that challenge, offering a reliable foundation for nanoscale fabrication, according to eurekalert! on November 17, 2025.

The discovery allows for precise control over the nanotubes' behavior, which is critical for their application in sensitive technologies. This level of control opens new avenues for reliable nanoscale applications across various industries, as highlighted by multiple reports.

The research findings, detailing this significant advancement, were published in the prestigious journal ACS Nano, confirmed by Penn State and other sources. Professor Rotkin emphasized that this work provides an important proof of concept for future developments.

• Nanotubes are incredibly small cylindrical structures, so minuscule that thousands could fit across the width of a human hair, as described by Penn State on November 6, 2025. These hollow tubes, formed by rolling up sheets of atoms, exhibit unique properties such as being stronger than steel yet lighter than plastic, efficiently conducting heat, and carrying electricity with minimal resistance.

• Scientists had previously been able to reliably produce nanotubes from carbon, which acts as a semiconductor or semimetal, and from insulating boron nitride. However, creating stable metallic nanotubes remained an unsolved challenge due to the complex behavior of metals at the atomic scale, explained Professor Rotkin.

• The research team specifically worked with niobium disulfide, a metal known for its superconductivity in bulk form. The challenge was to coax this material into tubes just billionths of a meter wide, as it typically prefers to form flat sheets, according to eurekalert! on November 17, 2025.

• The breakthrough occurred when researchers introduced a minute amount of ordinary salt at a critical stage in the process. This unexpected ingredient triggered the metal to wrap around a template, enabling the formation of stable nanotube shells, rather than spreading flat, as reported by Penn State.

• An additional surprise was the predominant formation of double-layered structures, resembling nested cylinders. Computational modeling supported the idea that the interaction between these layers was key to maintaining the nanotubes' integrity, with electrons potentially hopping between layers to stabilize the structure like a microscopic capacitor.

• The tubular shape of these niobium sulfide nanotubes addresses a long-standing issue in nanoscale fabrication. Unlike nanowires, which are often cut from two-dimensional sheets and can have rough edges that degrade performance, these rolled tubes offer smooth, continuous surfaces with predictable properties, enhancing reliability for advanced devices.

• These metallic shells, unlike their insulating or semiconducting counterparts, can, in principle, exhibit phenomena like superconductivity and magnetism. This characteristic is vital for next-generation electronic, superconducting, and quantum devices that require atomic-level reliability, as highlighted by Professor Rotkin.

• The use of salt in nanomaterial synthesis is gaining broader recognition; for example, scitechdaily reported on November 27, 2024, that molten salt has been used to create "previously unimaginable nanocrystals" by replacing organic solvents. This indicates a growing trend in leveraging simple salts for complex material engineering.