Stretching the Mold

Replica molding has long been used to make macroscopic objects such as bronze statues or plastic dolls from a mold or master. Recently, this method has been extended to the nanoscale. Mallouk highlights the report by Jiang et al. , who have devised a two-step replica molding process that starts from spherical silica particles and results in regular assemblies of spherical or distorted particles of a different composition. The ability to make regular, asymmetric particles may be useful in photonics and the assembly of nanoscale devices.