The wires are all aligned. By changing the electrical potential in the gold plate, Dudek can observe a current going through all the wires. To measure the extraordinarily fast speeds at which OPV conducts electrons, Hadley Sikes, also a graduate student in Chidsey's lab, took the nanowires to Brookhaven. She found that electrons move across the smallest OPV wires in about 20 picoseconds. This is really fast equivalent to about 340 miles per hour.
Electricity moves through nanowires very differently from ordinary electrical wires.
The electrons in metal wire move at a constant speed as they bump each other across the wire. Cut the length of a metal wire in half and it will take half as long for electrons to pass through it. But organic nanowires don't conduct electricity that way. The rate of speed increases exponentially as the wires get shorter. For example, a 3-nanometer wire of OPV would conduct 950 times faster than a wire that's twice as long.