They performed this trick, as they explain in the journal Langmuir, using a substance called phenyl azido, which readily forms covalent bonds with its neighbours when exposed to ultraviolet light.

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As the team reports in a forthcoming issue of Langmuir, a journal devoted to the study of colloids, the new technique allows them to build composite materials with custom-designed features as tiny as the diameter of a human hair.

ECONOMIST: A new way to build complicated materials, micron by micron