Origami is the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. One uncut square of paper can, in the hands of an origami artist, be folded into a bird, a frog, a sailboat, or a Japanese samurai helmet beetle.

In contrast to lithographic techniques, the LMU team uses a method called DNA origami to design and synthesize building blocks, which then self-assemble into a specific lattice structure. “It’s long ...