"Anyone needing access to large-area nanoscale patterns on the cheap could benefit from this method," said Professor Teri W. Odom of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

"It is a simple, low-cost and high-throughput nanopatterning method that can be done in any laboratory."

Shrinky Dinks are large flexible sheets which are heated in an oven.

When exposed to heat, they shrink to small hard plates without altering their colour or shape.

The new technique utilises this property to manipulate the electronic, photonic and magnetic properties of nanomaterials.

It also easily controls a pattern's size and symmetry and can be used to produce millions of copies of the pattern over a large area.

Potential applications include devices that take advantage of nanoscale patterns, such as solar cells, high-density displays, computers, and chemical and biological sensors.

Solvent-assisted nanoscale embossing (SANE) can increase the spacing of patterns up to 100 per cent as well as decrease them down to 50 per cent in a single step, merely by stretching or heating (shrinking) the polymer substrate (the Shrinky Dinks material).

Also, SANE can reduce critical feature sizes as small as 45 per cent compared to the master by controlled swelling of patterned polymer moulds with different solvents.

SANE works from the nanoscale to the macroscale.

"No other existing nanopatterning method can both prototype arbitrary patterns with small separations and reproduce them over six-inch wafers for less than US$100," Professor Odom said.