Molecules spontaneously form honeycomb network featuring pores of unprecedented size: "Spreading anthraquinone, a common and inexpensive chemical, on to a flat copper surface, Greg Pawin, a chemistry graduate student working in the laboratory of Ludwig Bartels, associate professor of chemistry, observed the spontaneous formation of a two-dimensional honeycomb network comprised of anthraquinone molecules. (Click here to view animation.)

The finding, reported in the Aug. 18 issue of Science, describes a new mechanism by which complex patterns are generated at the nanoscale – 0.1 to 100 nanometers in size, a nanometer being a billionth of a meter – without any need for expensive processes such as lithography.

'We know that some of the most striking phenomena in nature, like the colors on a butterfly wing, come about by the regular arrangement of atoms and molecules,' said Pawin, the first author of the paper. 'But what physical and chemical processes guide their arrangement? Anthraquinone showed us how such patterns can form easily and spontaneously.' "