As researchers engineer everything from computer chips to drug-discovery tools down to smaller and smaller scales, making these devices is becoming excruciatingly difficult. The principal micromanufacturing technique, photolithography, uses light to etch microscopic features onto a silicon surface; but it's expensive and exacting. One promising alternative is called "soft lithography," a technique that uses flexible rubber stamps to fabricate devices with micro- and nanoscale features.

Until now soft lithography has mainly been used to make tiny devices like microfluidic chambers used for biological research. But Harvard University chemists George Whitesides -soft lithography's pioneer-and Heiko Jacobs have found a new application: transferring nanoscale patterns of electrical charge onto electrically conductive polymers. This advance could mean a cheaper and easier way to manufacture very small data storage and optical devices.