US team succeeds in growing new materials from nanorods

Such materials have the potential to be used in applications including data processing and human medicine, according to the university, but attempts to assemble nanoscale objects into sophisticated structures have largely been unsuccessful.

In a statement, the university said its study represents a major breakthrough in the field, showing how thermodynamic forces can be used to manipulate the growth of nanoparticles into superparticles with unprecedented precision. The study is published in the 19 October edition of the journal Science.

In the Florida University study, a synergism of fluorescent nanorods, sometimes used as biomarkers in biomedical research, resulted in a superparticle with an emission polarisation ratio that could make it a candidate for use in creating a new generation of polarised light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

‘The technology for making the single nanorods is well established,’ said Tie Wang, a postdoctoral researcher at Florida University and lead author of the study. ‘But what we’ve lacked is a way to assemble them in a controlled fashion to get useful structures and materials.’