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The article says:

> shortened the silicon nanowires to 0.25nm

That's a very short wire. Isn't that about the diameter of a silicon atom? I thought the smallest wires we could make on silicon were about 20nm _wide_.

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Yes, that's almost certainly wrong (or, at least, should no longer be called a nanowire). A length of 0.25 nm is of the order of the interatomic distance between a single pair of Si atoms.

The atoms aren’t that small it’s just difficult/impossible to reliably manufacture devices with features smaller than that using visible light photolithography.

A silicon atom is about 220 picometers across (subject to change depending on how you add, subtract, or squeeze the electrons).

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