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Enlarge Image All together now. Arrays of silicon tips with a springlike polymer support can pattern materials cheaply over large areas. Credit: C. Mirkin/Northwestern University Someday, nanotechnologists fancy, they'll be able to build materials atom by atom from the bottom up, LEGO-style. Right now they're still working on the two-dimensional equivalent: writing ultrafine lines and dots of selected molecules on ultrasmooth surfaces. Unfortunately, all the molecular "pens" developed so far have been either too blunt-tipped or too costly for broad use. Now a new technique might enable nanotechnologists to quickly and cheaply write molecular features across a large area....

UK scientists have developed a method to control the behaviour and fate of stem cells using chemically-defined nanopatterned surfaces. This could aid development of tissues and organs for transplants.Stem cell research offers limitless opportunities to develop new medical therapies, such as growing organs and tissues in the lab for transplantation into humans. The ability to reproducibly control cultures of stem cells is very important to avoid variation in clinical trials but the lack of consistency in the material on which the cells are grown has so far made this difficult. Also, current methods used to control stem cell behaviour, such...

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Ever since the invention of the first scanning probe microscope in 1981, researchers have believed the powerful tool would someday be used for the nanofabrication and nanopatterning of surfaces in a molecule-by-molecule, bottom-up fashion. Despite 25 years of research in this area, the world has hit a brick wall in developing a technique with commercial potential -- until now. Northwestern University researchers have developed a 55,000-pen, two-dimensional array that allows them to simultaneously create 55,000 identical patterns drawn with tiny dots of molecular ink on substrates of gold or glass. Each structure is only a single molecule...