Credit: Silklab/Tufts Univ.

Electron beams can create very fine nano-structured patterns on thin films of silk, with only water required to complete the etching process.

Fiorenzo Omenetto from Tufts University in Massachusetts and his team say that their silk-and-water system avoids the toxic chemicals and complex processing steps needed in other forms of lithography. The authors created photonic lattices (pictured), which manipulate light, with resolution as high as 30 nanometres. They also etched patterns out of silk films to which active materials, such as enzymes, proteins or quantum dots, had been added.

Nature Nanotechnol. http://doi.org/r3c (2014)