Not-So-Spotty Material Breakthrough.

Using pulsed lasers, researchers have coaxed the metal nickel to self-assemble into arrays of nanodots — each spot a mere seven nanometers (seven billionths of a meter) across -- one-tenth the diameter of nickel nanodots and on par with the world's smallest.

Because the method works with a variety of materials and may drastically reduce imperfections, the new procedure may also bolster research into extremely hard materials and efforts to develop ultra-dense computer memory.