Everywhere in our surroundings we increasingly come in contact with nanostructures that have distinctive complex shape features on a scale comparable to the particle itself. Such shape ensembles can be made by modern nano-synthetic methods and many industrial processes. With the ever growing universe of nanoscale shapes, names such as “nanoflowers” and “nanostars” no longer precisely describe or characterise the distinct nature of the particles. Here we capture and digitise particle shape information on the relevant size scale and create a condensed representation in which the essential shape features can be captured, recognized and correlated. We find the natural emergence of intrinsic shape groups as well-defined ensemble distributions and show how these may be analyzed and interpreted to reveal novel aspects of our nanoscale shape environment. We show how these ideas may be applied to the interaction between the nanoscale-shape and the living universe and provide a conceptual framework for the study of nanoscale shape biological recognition and identity.

在我们周围的任何地方，我们越来越多地与具有独特的复杂形状特征的纳米结构接触，其尺度可与粒子本身相比。可以通过现代的纳米合成方法和许多工业过程来制造这样的形状集合体。随着纳米级形状的不断增长，“纳米花”和“纳米星”等名称不再精确地描述或表征颗粒的独特性质。在这里，我们在相关的尺寸尺度上捕获并数字化粒子形状信息，并创建一个简明的表示形式，在其中可以捕获，识别和关联基本形状特征。我们发现固有形状组的自然出现以及定义明确的集合分布，并展示了如何进行分析和解释以揭示我们纳米级形状环境的新颖方面。