Experts say that this is an important first step toward releasing sterile males into the wild to reduce the size of mosquito populations.
Malaria kills around one million people worldwide every year, and in Africa alone, accounts for 20% of all childhood deaths.
The work is reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Insect sterilisation isn't new: scientists have attempted to control the sleeping sickness-carrying tsetse fly by exposing them to radiation to render them sterile.
A similar approach has been successfully used against the potatoes weevil in Japan and the tropical screwworm that attacks cattle.
