A paper just published in the American Chemical Society's journal, Nano suggests a sprinkling of graphene may deal with this problem.

Until now, these graphene nanoribbons were made using top-down approaches, such as "cutting" the ribbons from larger graphene sheets or "unzipping" carbon nanotubes.

The new technique involves "writing" electrically conducting nanowires onto graphene oxide using a tiny heated tip and could be ideal for making flexible electronic devices.