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C. Mirkin, Northwestern UniversityLight work. Using a digital micromirror to split beams of light and direct them through apertures in polymer pyramids, Northwestern University researchers drew a variety of molecular architectures and used those to make up the "land" in a map of the world. Imagine trying to draw a maze on something the width of a human hair. Engineers do it all the time when they carve circuits onto semiconductors for our cell phones, tablets, and desktops. That doesn't mean it's easy: The process can require fabrication facilities costing billions of dollars. Now, modifications to an old technique could...

Fabrication methods combining printing and lithography have proven fertile. Andy Extance now asks how successful will they be outside the lab? © Felice C FrankelAbout eight carbon–carbon single bonds laid end-to-end. Roughly two sodium chloride unit cells side-by-side. These chemists’ benchmarks are useful for understanding a size far too small to see with the naked eye: the nanometre. Chemicals naturally inhabit this scale, even as electronic engineers drill ever further into it to make chips for our computers and smartphones. Now that semiconductor scientists are making commercial transistors with dimensions as small as 22nm, they face perhaps their biggest challenge...

Combined electron and ion beam imprinter opens the way for numerous applications An ion-beam system that simultaneously combines focused beams of electrons and positive ions promises to improve the versatility, efficiency, and economy of this important technology. The new system was developed by researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who report its principles and applications in the 8 November 2004 issue of "Applied Physics Letters." Focused ion beams are important in the semiconductor industry, where they are used to carve structures with dimensions measured in billionths of a meter, repair defects in masks used for photolithography,...