[gregpawin]

Published in Science last week was the technique for turning micrometers tall carbon nanotube forests, the technique for which has been around for a while, into sheets.  Instead of using the usually method of filtering nanotubes through a filter paper and getting a 2D sheet of nanotubes arranged in all directions, by using something like a post-it note, a sheet can be produced by sticking one side of the forest and pulling.  The forest eventually collapses towards the direction of the pulling and creates anisotropic sheets parallel to the direction of the pull.  If you can access the journal article, there's a very cool SEM picture of this.

Anyhow, there are very interesting properties, like strength: although the sheet itself is micrometers thick, it can hold up its own weight and the weight of droplets of water and juice they demonstrated to sit on the film.  The resistance is also anisotropic and if used as a light filament, produces polarized light.  They also sandwiched a strip between two pieces of plastic and applied microwaves which heated and welded the pieces together.  It's also very nice in that it is a very flexible yet still conducts and  is easy to attach to other objects: just wet it on some thing and it'll stick when it dries.  Very cool stuff.  Some body's gonna make a lotta money off of this.  Link goes to some videos.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/83/i34/8334notw3.html