The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology (often simply called the MacDiarmid Institute) is one of the first New Zealand Centres of Research Excellence (CoREs) and specialises in materials science and nanotechnology. It is hosted by Victoria University of Wellington, and is a collaboration between five universities and two Crown Research Institutes.

Background

The Centres of Research Excellence initiative was set up in 2002 to allocate contestable New Zealand government funding through the Tertiary Education Commission to collaborative research groups. At the time the funding was announced, two materials science research groups were putting together competing bids.

One, based at the University of Canterbury, was the Nanostructure Engineering, Science and Technology (NEST) group. They had already received a Marsden grant in 1998 and run a 2001 workshop on semiconductor nanostructures in Queenstown attended by Nobel Laureate Klaus von Klitzing. Their bid, titled "the New Zealand Centre for Nanoengineered Materials and Device Research", was led by Richard Blaikie and included researchers Maan Alkaisi, Simon Brown, Steve Durbin and Roger Reeves.

Governance and funding

thumb|Staff of the MacDiarmid Institute at the 2025 Annual Symposium. Back row: Kirsty Doyle, Kevin Sheehy, Gabrielle Holmes, Anna Garden, Vanessa Young. Front row: [[Pauline Harris, Rosie Wayte, Nicola Gaston, and Natalie Plank.]]

The first five Centres of Research Excellence shared an initial $60m fund between them: a one-off capital expenditure of $20m, and $40.6m over four years. In 2009 the MacDiarmid Institute received an anonymous bequest of $1 million to support postgraduate research into nanotechnology.

Directors

{| class="wikitable"

!

!Name

!Term

!Notes

|-

| 1

| Paul Callaghan

| 2002–2008

|

|-

| 2

| Richard Blaikie

| 2008–2011

|

|-

| 3

| Kathryn McGrath

| 2011–2015

|

|-

| 4

| Thomas Nann

| 2015–2018

|

|-

| 5

| Nicola Gaston / Justin Hodgkiss

| 2018–2025

|

|-

|6

|Nicola Gaston

|2025–

|

|}

Research

In its early years, the MacDiarmid Institute divided its research into five themed areas, each with a "theme leader":

  1. Nanoengineered material and devices (leader: Roger Reeves): nanofabrication of integrated circuits and small devices, with applications in biomolecule detection, magnetic sensors for computer hard drives, and electron field emissions for flat-panel displays.
  2. Electronic, optic-electronic, and superconducting materials (leader: Andy Edgar): crystal structure of metal nitrides, high-temperature superconductors, composite glasses with nano-crystalline inclusions, and high temperature spectroscopy.
  3. Conducting polymers (leader: Keith Gordon): nanostructured electromaterials using conductive polymers, carbon nanotubes, nanofibres, and quantum dots.
  4. Soft materials (leader: Kate McGrath): complex fluid systems, emulsions, biomaterials and single biomolecule physics, semi-flexible polymers, plasmonics and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.
  5. Advanced inorganic and hybrid nanostructured materials (leader: Ken MacKenzie): developing inorganic polymers and hybrid or composite materials with potential applications in sensors, energy conversion, and biotechnology.

The Institute currently divides its work into four research areas:

  • Towards Zero Waste – Reconfigurable Systems
  • Towards Zero Carbon – Catalytic Architectures
  • Towards Low Energy Tech – Hardware for Future Computing
  • Sustainable resource use – Mātauranga Māori Research Programme

Spinoff companies

MacDiarmid Institute research had led to the formation of over 30 affiliated spinoff companies. The earliest were: zinc-based rechargeable batteries

  • Nano Cluster Devices (2003), founded by Simon Brown: self-assembly of nanowires
  • Magritek (2004), founded by Paul Callaghan: nuclear magnetic resonance technology

Awards

From 2004 to 2008, the MacDiarmid Institute was a sponsor of the annual MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year awards for up-and-coming scientists and researchers in New Zealand receiving a scholarship from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology. The winner travelled to Washington, D.C. to meet the winners of the equivalent prize awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. These awards replaced the FiRST Scholarship Awards, and were in 2009 replaced by the Prime Minister's MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize, won that year by John Watt at Victoria University of Wellington.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Young Scientist of the Year

|-

!Year

!Winner

!Institution

!Research area

|-

|2004

|Andrew Rudge

|University of Canterbury

|bioengineering sedative drug delivery

|-

|2005

|Jessica North

|University of Otago

|environmental contamination from leaky landfills

|-

|2006

|Claire French

|University of Auckland

|cell identification technology

|-

|2007

|Jessie Jacobsen

|University of Otago

|marine ecology

|}

Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology conference

The MacDiarmid Institute runs a biennial international conference on advanced materials and nanotechnology (AMN). Its precursor, referred to by Richard Blaikie as "AMN0", was the 2001 semiconductor nanostructures conference in Queenstown organised by Simon Brown and Joe Trodahl. AMN11 was held in February 2025 for the first time in Christchurch, at Te Pae conference centre. It featured research on mechanobiology, quantum computing, and carbon-free iron production; Nobel Laureate Moungi Bawendi gave a public talk attended by over 650 people.

See also

  • Investigators at the MacDiarmid Institute

References

  • MacDiarmid Institute website
  • MacDiarmid Institute's BioNanotechnology network