Rice shines a light

Engineers, physicists and chemists from

Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) have created rice-shaped particles of gold and iron oxide.

"On the nanoscale, the shape of a particle plays a critical role in how it interacts with light," said LANP Director Naomi Halas. "We were looking for a new shape that would combine the best properties of the two most optically useful shapes – spheres and rods. That shape turned out to look exactly like a grain of rice."

Nanoparticles like nanorice can be used to focus light on small regions of space. Rice's scientists plan to capitalise on this by attaching grains of nanorice to scanning probe microscopes. By moving the grains next to proteins and unmapped features on the surfaces of cells, they hope to get a far clearer picture than what's available with current technology.

In form, nanorice is similar to nanoshells, a spherical nanoparticle Halas invented in 1998 that is currently being examined for possible applications in molecular imaging, cancer treatment, medical diagnostics and chemical sensing. Both nanorice and nanoshells are made of a non-conducting core that is covered by a metallic shell.