Scientists from four U.S. universities have created a way to use Rice University’s self-assembled, light-activated nanoshells as building blocks for 2-D and 3-D structures that could find use in chemical sensors, nanolasers and light-absorbing metamaterials.

The new materials are ideally suited for making ultrasensitive biological and chemical sensors, said study co-author Peter Nordlander, professor of physics and astronomy at Rice. He said they may also be useful in nanolasers and potentially in integrated photonic circuits that run off of light rather than electricity.