Polymer transport through a fractal metamaterial

Many natural environments, like the cell nucleus, feature polymer transport through a confined space that is characterized by multiple scales which follow a fractal scaling. One would expect that a polymer traversing such an environment must be capable of traveling using multiple qualitatively different transport and confinement regimes. However, the majority of prior experiments using single nanoconfined polymers have tested a single confinement regime, or the (possibly gradual) transition between two regimes. Here we test the transport of double-stranded DNA through nanochannel systems that form metamaterials with a dimensionality between one and two, and compare the observed configuations with hierarchical materials that follow the same design rules, but are of dimensionality two.