Our research areas
Towards Zero Waste - Reconfigurable Systems
Building on our highly interdisciplinary track-record in soft materials, we will reimagine the use and reuse of materials themselves - from taonga 3D printed from traditional Māori materials, to creating a form of artificial cells that self-regulate and reconfigure for different functions.
Towards Zero Carbon - Catalytic Architectures
Our research will support New Zealand's goal for 'net zero' carbon emissions by 2050. We will explore new materials that will catch CO2 from air and waste streams. We'll also design new catalysts that will turn CO2 into green fuels.
Read more about Towards Zero Carbon - Catalytic Architectures
Towards Low Energy Tech - Hardware for Future Computing
The data centres worldwide that support our digital lifestyles use almost ten times as much electricity per year as the whole of NZ. We will develop computing materials that process information more like a brain, and that use far less energy than conventional electronics.
Read more about Towards Low Energy Tech - Hardware for Future Computing
Sustainable Resource Use - Mātauranga Māori Research Programme
Crosscutting these Research Programmes sits our Mātauranga Māori Research Programme. This programme provides a platform for the other research programmes, intersecting with the theme of sustainability.
Read more about Sustainable Resource Use - Mātauranga Māori Research Programme
Featured news & events
May 24, 2023
Four Independent Postdoctoral Fellowships awarded
The MacDiarmid Institute has four new Independent Postdoctoral Fellows.
Read more about Four Independent Postdoctoral Fellowships awarded
April 14, 2023
Professor Alan MacDiarmid
We’re named after Nobel laureate Professor Alan MacDiarmid. Alan was a regular visitor and friend to...
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.
Latest news & events
News Article
Two MacDiarmid students reflect on their time at the Global Young Scientists Summit, Singapore 2023
February 27, 2023
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
Biswas, S., Melton, L. D., Nelson, A. R. J., Le Brun, A. P., Heinrich, F., McGillivray, D. J. & Xu, A. Y. The Assembly Mechanism and Mesoscale Architecture of Protein-Polysaccharide Complexes Formed at the Solid-liquid Interface. Langmuir 38, 12551–12561 (2022).
Lambie, S., Steenbergen, K. G. & Gaston, N. Concentration dependent alloying behaviour of liquid GaAu. Chemical Communications (2022). doi:1039/d2cc04944a
Nachtigal, J., Chong, S. V., Williams, G. V. M., Isaeva, A., Oeckler, O., Haase, J. & Guehne, R. 125Te NMR study of the bulk of topological insulators Bi2Te3 and Sb2Te3. Zeitschrift fur Anorganische und Allgemeine Chemie (2022). doi:1002/zaac.202200208
Narasimhan, B. N., Dixon, A. W., Mansel, B., Taberner, A., Mata, J. & Malmström, J. Hydrogen bonding dissipating hydrogels: The influence of network structure design on structure–property relationships. Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 630, 638–653 (2023).
Ridings, K. M. & Hendy, S. C. Nanowire melting modes during the solid–liquid phase transition: theory and molecular dynamics simulations. Scientific Reports 12, no. 20052 (2022).
Zhang, Y. & Granville, S. Two-channel anomalous Hall effect originating from the intermixing in Mn2 CoAl/ Pd thin films. Physical Review B 106, no. 144414 (2022).
Meet our people
Associate Professor Chris Fitchett
Associate Investigator
Tomorrow's Electronic Devices, Towards Zero Carbon - Catalytic Architectures
Our research is currently focused on the synthesis and materials properties of large non-carbon atom containing graphenes and how we can exploit these by controlling their aggregation.
Dr Shen Chong
Associate Investigator
Functional Nanostructures, Towards Low Energy Tech - Hardware for Future Computing
The sheer knowledge and experience Jeff (Tallon) brings to my work is invaluable.
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