The quest for economical devices with faster speeds, lighter weights, and higher feature density drives demand for new fabrication tools that create ever more complex patterns, with sub-micron features. Typical state-of-the-art fabrication is top-down and involves multiple steps and careful surface preparation; Nature, on the other hand, provides us with examples of delicate, detailed, and beautiful patterns driven by instabilities, packing constraints, and simple geometries. By adding nanoparticles to the solvent, we make a "nano-ink" which allows us to print the resulting patterns onto flat and curved surfaces. Our method can be applied to a wide range of materials and potentially benefit novel technologies.
