Maxx Arguilla makes pasta. This is true in the literal sense—Arguilla, a materials chemist at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), is a foodie who likes to cook. But molecular pasta is also a good way to describe the ultrathin wires and other electronic materials he is building his career on. The field of solid-state chemistry he works in, sometimes described as low-dimensional condensed matter, kicked off in 2004, when Arguilla was in high school. That’s when researchers isolated graphene, a semiconducting carbon material just one atom thick. Two-dimensional sheets of graphene represent the lasagna noodles of Arguilla’s molecular pasta cupboard. Meanwhile, he has figured out how to create spaghetti— 1D wires made from antimony, selenium, and other inorganic elements. His group also grows inorganic tubes inside carbon nanotube templates, making rigatoni. And the researchers can make spiraling helices that resemble fusilli. While it’s fun listening to Arguilla rattle off