Making metallic ribbons In its usual two-dimensional form, graphene does not have an energy gap in its electronic structure. However, one-dimensional ribbons made of the material are semiconducting and making them metallic is tricky. Rizzo et al. developed a strategy for synthesizing metallic graphene nanoribbons and demonstrated their metallicity using scanning tunneling spectroscopy. These metallic graphene nanoribbons may be useful for exploring exotic quantum phases in a single dimension. Science , this issue p. 1597