Inprentus was founded in June 2012 by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign physics professor Peter Abbamonte to commercialize an innovative, dual-atomic microscope scribing technology, which is a technique for carrying out nano-scale lithography via mechanical deformation of metallic surfaces. This technology is a general purpose approach to high-precision patterning of surfaces, and is particularly suited to x-ray and EUV diffractive optics in which features must be shaped with 0.1 degree angular precision and positioned with nanometer precision over distances of tens of centimeters. X-ray diffraction gratings are used by many academic institutions, government laboratories, and Fortune 500 companies at synchrotron radiation facilities for a variety of scientific and commercial applications.