Using simple bottom-up approach researchers at Illinois and at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology have built an inexpensive active structure of flexible and soft nanotubes for lab-on-chip applications. By depositing nanoparticles onto a charged surface nanotube from silicon that are flexible and nearly as soft as rubber has been created. By applying an electric field to a colloidal suspension of silicon nanoparticles in alcohol of about 1 nanometer in diameter thin film is formed and upon drying, the film spontaneously detaches from the substrate and rolls into a nanotube. Nanotubes with diameters ranging from 2 to 5 microns and up to 100 microns long have been achieved. The basis is that nanotubes consist of silicon nanoparticles held together by oxygen atoms to form a three-dimensional network. Because the silicon nanoparticles are made using a basic electrochemical procedure they have properties such as photoluminescence, photostability and stimulated emission and the resulting nanotubes might serve as nanodiodes and flexible lasers that could be controlled with an electric field.