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South Dakota School of Mines is the recipient of a $1 million grant from the Department of Energy to drive advancements in nanoscience. Specifically, the grant will allow researchers at the school to study gold nanoparticles. 

 “The project will focus on synthesizing and arranging gold nanoparticles with broken shapes to explore unprecedented ways of manipulating light – a development that could open new possibilities in fields such as sensing, microscopy and advanced materials engineering,” according to the school in a news release announcing the grant.

For those of us who aren’t smart enough to understand what this grant hopes to achieve, School of Mines explains that nanoparticles could be useful in miniature optical devices that can advance “unprecedented imaging resolution.” 

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