[akiselev]

Economically mass producing microchips is only possible because they are 100s of square millimeters in size and very valuable per square mm. Any bigger than that and error rates in the fab process start to destroy the yield.

These fibers are used in much bigger applications like body armor or mechanical composite parts where the surface area is on the order of square meters, not millimeters.

[AlotOfReading]

Modern panel fabs use fine masking over like 10sq. meters with precision on the same order of this (~dozens of micrometers), and people have successfully shown lithography over similar panel sizes by separate exposures.

[HPsquared]

The feature size is a LOT bigger than microchips though:

"Each knot is around 70 micrometers in height and width, and each fiber has a radius of around 1.7 micrometers"

That is, cheaper lithography methods could presumably be used.