Patent ID: 8578943

Claim:
A smoking article comprising metal-containing nanowires having uniform dimensions, wherein the metal-containing nanowires are capable of removing at least one constituent from tobacco smoke, wherein the at least one constituent is selected from the group consisting of aldehydes, carbon monoxide, 1,3-butadiene, isoprene, acrolein, acrylonitrile, hydrogen cyanide, o-toluidine, 2-naphtylamine, nitrogen oxide, benzene, N-nitrosonornicotine, phenol, catechol, benz(a)anthracene, benzo(a)pyrene, and mixtures thereof, and the metal-containing nanowires are present in an amount effective to remove at least about 30% of at least one constituent from mainstream smoke; wherein the metal-containing nanowires are less than 100 nm in diameter and have an aspect ratio of length to width between about 100 to about 1000 or the metal-containing nanowires are less than 5 nm in diameter; wherein the metal-containing nanowires are incorporated in support particles having a particle size of 100 μm or less located in a filter portion of the smoking article and the metal-containing nanowires are disposed on a cut filler of the smoking article; wherein the metal-containing nanowires are produced by: (i) loading at least one metal-containing composition into a mesoporous molecular sieve substrate via repeated incipient-wetness impregnation followed by stepwise calcination to form said metal-containing nanowires; and (ii) isolating the nanowires by extracting the mesoporous molecular sieve substrate; and wherein the metal-containing nanowires comprise a metal, a metal oxide or mixtures thereof, comprising at least one metal or metal oxide thereof selected from the group consisting of iron, copper, zinc, titanium, vanadium, silver, palladium, cobalt, molybdenum and manganese.