One dream of scientists making ultrasmall devices is coaxing materials to spontaneously form structures on a scale of micrometers, even nanometers. (A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.) The problem is how to control the location and orientation of structures made by this "self-assembly." Now a group of researchers at Princeton University may have stumbled across one solution: a way to form precise arrays of tiny pillars exactly where you want them. By providing a potentially cheap and easy method to make tiny structures, the technique could eventually lead to such things as even smaller integrated circuits and a simpler way to sort DNA molecules.

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