Carbon nanotubes in a dish assemble themselves into a nanowire in seconds under the influence of a custom-built Tesla coil created by scientists at Rice University.

But the scientists don’t limit their aspirations for the phenomenon they call Teslaphoresis to simple nanowires.

The team led by Rice research scientist Paul Cherukuri sees its invention as setting a path toward the assembly of matter from the bottom up on nano and macro scales.

There are even hints of a tractor beam effect in watching an assembled nanowire being pulled toward the coil.