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 - for example working towards the kind of controlled reactions that occur in 'artificial cells' that self-regulate and reconfigure for synthetic biology and other 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 - Pūtaiao Māori Research Programme
Crosscutting these Research Programmes sits our Pūtaiao 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 - Pūtaiao Māori Research Programme
Featured news & events
June 19, 2025
Celebrating Matariki values in our research
Deputy Director Māori, Associate Professor Pauline Harris, explores some of our research that relate…
April 2, 2025
Welcome to our Investigators in new roles
We welcome ten new Principal Investigators and ten new Associate Investigators
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.October 16, 2023
Video transcript
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.
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
Dong, Y., Ai, F., Sun-Waterhouse, D., Murai, K.-I., Moriga, T. & Waterhouse, G. I. N. Optical and Photocatalytic Properties of Three-Dimensionally Ordered Macroporous Ta2O5 and Ta3N5 Inverse Opals. Chemistry of Materials 35, 8281–8300 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.3c01903
Schuyt, J. J., Williams, G. V. M. & Chong, S. V. Long-Lived UV-Rewritable Luminescent Memory in a Fluoroperovskite Crystal. Advanced Optical Materials, 2302553 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1002/adom.202302553
Studholme, S. J., Heywood, Z. E., Mallinson, J. B., Steel, J. K., Bones, P. J., Arnold, M. D. & Brown, S. A. Computation via neuron-like spiking in percolating networks of nanoparticles. Nano Letters 23, 10594 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c03551
Chang, Z., Zhu, B., Liu, J., Dong, H., Hao, Y., Zhou, Y., Travas-Sejdic, J. & Xu, M. "Signal-on" electrochemical detection of BACE1 for early detection of Alzheimer's disease. Cell Reports Physical Science, 101632 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2023.101632
Stewart, G. T., Barbarich-Unasa, T. W., Enari, D., Faumuina, C., Heke, D., Henare, D., Lolohea, T., Phillips, M., Port, H., Staniland, N., Tapuni, N., Teaurere, R., Ualesi, Y., Walker, L., Devine, N. & Matapo, J. Experiences of indigenous (Māori/Pasifika) early career academics. Educational Philosophy and Theory (2023). https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2023.2271649
Meet our people
Dr Joseph Nelson
Associate Investigator
Towards Zero Waste - Reconfigurable Systems, Towards Zero Carbon - Catalytic Architectures
Computational structure prediction lets us take a 'blue-skies' approach to new materials, opening up many exciting possibilities.
Dr Tim Kemmitt
Emeritus Investigator
What we’re going for is cheap solar panels to stick on people’s rooves... If industry is interested, that’s everything really as far as we’re concerned.
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