HD laboratory products could be created with rusty nanorods

Tiny rods of iron oxide - better known to many people as rust - could soon offer a new way for laboratory products to display information in high definition.

When coated with silicon dioxide, fragments of iron oxide form nanorods which permanently keep a structure similar to that of a pea pod, say researchers from the University of California - Riverside.

In turn, these structures respond to the presence of a magnet, becoming aligned and emitting coloured light whose frequency varies according to the flux strength and angle of the field lines.

Yadong Yin, who worked on the study, says: "We have essentially developed tunable photonic materials whose properties can be manipulated by changing their orientation."

The news could lead to new high-definition displays for laboratory products, other technical instrumentation and mass-market electronics.

In 2007, the team first announced the discovery of the field effect on iron oxide particles in water, but the ability to create the nanorod structure is a more recent development.