implosion fabrication

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a miniaturisation technique to scale, downsize any physical object to the nanoscopic level whose method and materials most laboratories already have on hand.
The process works by using a laser to etch a frame out of expanded absorbent gel at workable dimensions and then overlay this scaffold with a material skin of the engineer’s choice. After assemble, the gel is then dried out, desiccated, pulling the structure inward, effectively resizing the object. The potential applications seem rather limitless and scientists believe that we might first encounter the technique used to improve optics and to make tiny robots.