What was old is now new again. Who would have thought that the fountain pen would be used again for modern cutting edge technology, but that is just what is happening at Northwestern University in Chicago. Researchers have recently re-invented the fountain pen on a microscale level by developing a pen that can write on the molecular level!

The "nanoscale fountain pen" was constructed using microfabrication techniques based on silicon fab technology. The research behind this device stems from dip pen nanolithography (DPN), which combines microelectronics fabrication and microfluidics to achieve molecular manipulation at the nanoscale level.