Our research areas
Functional Nanostructures
Imagine what you could create by combining the natural genius of biology with the latest advances in technology? Think of nature-inspired nanobots seeking out and destroying disease, bone implants that grow themselves and handheld sensors that can instantly diagnose cancer.
Materials for Energy Capture and Utilisation
Our investigators are exploring novel ways to capture and store energy and to absorb greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is to take new energy solutions to the nation and the world to help create a more sustainable future.
Read more about Materials for Energy Capture and Utilisation
Tomorrow's Electronic Devices
This theme is about predicting what tomorrow’s devices might need in terms of research, then undertaking that research today. We also work with industry to enable them to adopt and adapt this latest research. The potential in New Zealand’s High Value Manufacturing (HVM) sector is vast and we are tapping into that potential.
Featured news & events
August 7, 2020
DiscoveryCamp could be the cure for low numbers of Māori and Pasifika in science
DiscoveryCamp gives Māori and Pasifika high school students a taste of life as a scientist.
Read more about DiscoveryCamp could be the cure for low numbers of Māori and Pasifika in science
August 5, 2020
MacDiarmid scholarships for entrepreneurship and commercialisation
In 2019, we again offered competitive business scholarships to our alumni.
Read more about MacDiarmid scholarships for entrepreneurship and commercialisation
MacDiarmid Institute
New Zealand's best scientists, engineers and educators, unified for a common goal: to make, understand, and use new materials to improve people's lives.February 20, 2019
Video transcript
The challenges facing New Zealand and the world today - clean water, renewable energy, climate change - will be solved by tomorrow's scientists and engineers - sitting in our classrooms right now, ready to be inspired. They need new materials and new technology based on those materials that haven't been discovered yet.
That's what the MacDiarmid Institute does. We are New Zealand's best scientists, engineers and educators, unified for a common goal: to make, understand, and use new materials to improve people's lives.
What is materials science
MacDiarmid Institute investigators discuss how materials science and nanotechnology can solve the big problems of our time.May 8, 2019
Video transcript
Associate Professor Nicola Gaston: Can you imagine a future where electricity is practically free, where there's clean water available for everyone and a simple blood test taken at home can help diagnose some diseases?
The technology that can make each of those things possible is based on materials science. Materials are all around us; this coffee cup, this table, even this sugar I might put in the coffee. When we make things really small, as we do in nanotechnology, we create a material that has most of its substance at the surface. With sugar, that means it dissolves quickly. But in general what it means is that we can control the properties of that material with great precision. So we can take a material, any material - it could be a metal or it could be plastic - and we can play with the surface and give it new abilities. For example, we could make it anti-bacterial or we could make it absorb more light.
The MacDiarmid Institute is a network of New Zealand's best materials scientists. Materials science is the basis of all high-tech manufacturing, including sustainable environmental innovations such as new solar cells or carbon capture technologies for climate change mitigation. We work with existing industries and we also spinout new companies. In the past 15 years we have spun out 16 new companies.
Dr Ray Thomson: One of the really exciting things that the Investigators at MacDiarmid are working on is across this whole climate change area. Sequestering carbon dioxide, improving the efficiency of photovoltaic cells through to really advanced battery storage.
Associate Professor Nicola Gaston: If we want that future, a materially sustainable future, where everyone around the world can have clean water, personalised medicine, free electricity, we need materials technologies. In the MacDiarmid Institute we bring materials scientists together and we partner with industry to create intellectual property, jobs and wealth for New Zealand.
About us
We are a network of committed biologists, chemists, physicists and engineers who collaborate to develop innovations that will both solve big problems and boost the New Zealand economy.
What we do
Our research is creating new technologies to aid the transition to a more sustainable way of life and make our world a better place.
Our partnerships
We have ongoing partnerships with community groups, museums and other organisations to help us take science out of the lab to make it accessible, exciting and inspiring.
Check out our latest research
Porter, G. C., Tompkins, G. R., Schwass, D. R., Li, K. C., Waddell, J. N. & Meledandri, C. J. Anti-biofilm activity of silver nanoparticle-containing glass ionomer cements. Dental Materials (2020). doi:10.1016/j.dental.2020.05. 001
Raoufi, F., Ranjbar, Z., Rategar, S., Nowak, E. & Nazari, B. Wettability study of super-hydrophobic silica aerogel powders. Progress in Color, Colorants and Coatings 13, 75–83 (2020).
Pike, M. D., Bose, S. K., Mallinson, J. B., Acharya, S. K., Shirai, S., Galli, E., Weddell, S. J., Bones, P. J., Arnold, M. D., & Brown, S. A. Atomic Scale Dynamics Drive Brain-like Avalanches in Percolating Nanostructured Networks. Nano Letters 20, 3935-3942 (2020).
Uhrig, D. M., Williams, G. V. M., Bioletti, G. & Chong, S. V. Residual oxygen responsible for universal superconducting phase diagram in annealed FeS1-xTex-. Superconductor Science and Technology 33, 055006 (2020).
Boehme, S.C., ... Hodgkiss, J.M., ... & Infante, I. Phonon-Mediated and Weakly Size-Dependent Electron and Hole Cooling in CsPbBr3 Nanocrystals Revealed by Atomistic Simulations and Ultrafast Spectroscopy. Nano Letters (2020).
Meet our people
Professor Kenneth J.D. MacKenzie
Emeritus Investigator
Ceramic materials play a vital role in have the potential to improve and protect the quality of the environment and reduce the carbon footprint of human activity.
Professor Jim Johnston
Emeritus Investigator
Our long-term goal is to establish new export manufacturing industries in New Zealand and to provide new products and technologies to local and international industries. We work closely with industry and our various research projects are largely funded by industry and MBIE research grants.
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