Advances in nanotechnology require the development of nanofabrication methods for a variety of available materials, elements, and parameters. Existing methods do not possess specific characteristics and general methods of versatile nanofabrication remain elusive. In a new report now published in Science Advances, Naijia Liu and a team of scientists in mechanical engineering and materials science at the Yale University and the University of Connecticut in the U.S. described the underlying mechanisms of thermomechanical nanomolding to reveal a highly versatile nanofabrication approach. Based on the results, they could regulate, combine and predict the ability to develop general materials with material combinations and length scales. The mechanistic origins of thermomechanical nanomolding and their temperature-dependent transition provided a process to combine many materials in nanostructures and provide any material in moldable shapes at the nanoscale.