Media Credit: Jeff McWhorter Biomedical engineering graduate student Tonia Betancourt simulates the first step in the process she uses to target drugs to cancer cells. She injects drugs and antibodies into a suspension that is then shaken up in an emulsion process until the drug-infused nanoparticles separate out and can be solidified.

Imagine something 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a strand of hair.

This is how chemical engineering professor Brian Korgel describes the size of a nanoparticle.

Korgel is one of 55 faculty researchers at the University working with nanoparticles and nanotechnology in fields ranging from chemistry and physics to aerospace engineering and even anthropology, according to the UT research site, Eureka!

Nanotechnology refers to any kind of technology on a nanoscale, or anywhere between 1 and 100 nanometers, said electrical and computer engineering professor Mike Becker. And nanotechnology can be applied to just about any field.

"Maybe not English literature, but about everything else. Since you can use it in making materials, both organic and inorganic materials with special properties, and you know materials are used everywhere, it's likely that you'd see applications in most everything," he said.

Becker and his colleagues have been working on using nanoparticles in manufacturing since about 1992, specializing in the uses and production of nanosize particles. Along with UT physics professor John Keto and retired UT chemical engineering professor James Brock, Becker said he holds the patent to a basic laser method of manufacturing nanoparticles.

"Basically we take micro- or micron-sized particles suspended in gas, blow them up with a laser, and you get nanosized particles," he said. "The laser is a big hammer, essentially to break up the particles."

Korgel, on the other hand, specializes in making nanocrystals by synthetic means. This means that instead of breaking larger molecules down into nanosized particles, Korgel and his colleagues create nanocrystals as byproducts of reactions between molecules.

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