BREAKING NEWS

$35 million to Launch Groundbreaking Optical Microcombs Research At RMIT

The ARC Centre of Excellence in Optical Microcombs for Breakthrough Science (COMBS) launched recently, bringing together eight Australian universities to develop tools to explore new planets, prevent strokes or monitor natural disasters.

COMBS received $35 million from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and will be based at RMIT University, which will also invest more than $9 million, with significant support from the other participating universities.

COMBS will advance the science and technology of optical microcombs, the world’s most accurate measurement tools, which have the potential to transform medical diagnosis, communications, navigation, precision measurement and space exploration.

“Optical frequency combs are still generally confined to the most advanced science labs due to their size and complexity, however our team at COMBS aims to transform these systems into light-powered chips the size of a fingernail,” COMBS Centre Director Professor Arnan Mitchell said.

“We will do this through partnering with scientific and industrial end-users to create new approaches and solutions in biomedical imaging, communications, precision measurement and astronomy.”

COMBS will bring together experts from RMIT and across Australia in optical physics and semiconductor technology, with its research into microcombs having impacts in a variety of fields such as information processing, navigation, defence, biomedical imaging, environmental sciences and space exploration.

“The launch of COMBS marks a new chapter not just for RMIT, but for Australian science,” said Professor Alec Cameron, RMIT Vice-Chancellor and President. “COMBS will enable RMIT and Australia to lead in global scientific research, contributing to national capabilities in advanced manufacturing, environmental monitoring and medical technologies.”

Twisted Light Made Simple

A new approach to creating materials that interact selectively with different twists in light, known as chiral responses, greatly simplifies their fabrication, and could pave the way for advances in biosensing, photochemistry, and quantum optics.

A team from Australian National University’s (ANU) Nonlinear Physics Centre were exploring chiral metasurfaces when they came up with the idea. Metasurfaces are patterned with regular arrays of structures smaller than the wavelength of light; the exact geometry of the structures determines responses to light, that can be dramatically different from naturally occurring materials.

ANU PhD student Ivan Toftul was designing a chiral metasurface, which requires asymmetry to produces the chiral effects. An example effect would be blocking right circularly polarised light while letting through left circularly polarised light.

Chiral metamaterials have been created previously, based on individual asymmetric elements in a regular array. Instead, Toftul began thinking about the overall arrangement of the array, and realised the effect they were looking for could also be created by symmetric elements arranged in an asymmetric way.

“To create individual chiral or, equivalently, mirror asymmetric elements is very challenging, you need advanced fabrication facilities,” he said. “So we looked at this from a different perspective and realised a simple shift of the whole lattice would break all the in-plane mirror symmetries, and give a chiral response, even if the individual elements were symmetric.”

Chiral properties allow the polarisation of light to be manipulated, which can be used in quantum optics experiments, for example for cryptography or information processing. Also, many biological molecules are chiral, occurring in left or right-handed configurations that respond to one circular polarisation of light more strongly than the other.

This new metasurface’s ability to produce and process polarised light will be a boon in the identification of the different configurations. For example, some drugs are chiral, and only active in one symmetry – the other symmetry may be inactive, or worse still, harmful.

Next-Gen Batteries Using Food-Based Acids

Hit Sustainability Sweet Spot

A novel battery component that uses food-based acids found in sherbet and winemaking could make lithium-ion batteries more efficient, affordable and sustainable.

The prototype, developed and patented by UNSW chemists, reduces environmental impacts across its materials and processing inputs while increasing energy storage capability.

The single-layer pouch cell currently being optimised is similar to what you’d use in a mobile phone, only smaller, said lead researcher Professor Neeraj Sharma from UNSW Science.

“We’ve developed an electrode that can significantly increase the energy storage capability of lithium-ion batteries by replacing graphite with compounds derived from food acids, such as tartaric acid [that occurs naturally in many fruits] and malic acid [found in some fruits and wine extracts].”

Food acids are readily available, typically less aggressive and contain the necessary functional groups or chemical characteristics, he said. “[Our battery component] could potentially use food acids from food waste streams, [reducing their environmental and economic impact]. Its processing uses water rather toxic solvents, so we’re improving the status quo across multiple areas.”

Food waste costs the Australian economy around $36.6 billion each year and accounts for about three per cent of our annual greenhouse gas emissions.

“By using waste produced at scale for battery components, the industry can diversify their inputs while addressing both environmental and sustainability concerns,” Professor Sharma said.

Professor Sharma leads the solid state and materials chemistry group, part of the cross-faculty batteries research community of practice at UNSW. They work with government and industry partners across all aspects of battery life.

IFM Discovery Unlocks New Power For Piezoelectric Effect

Solid materials have been key to generating the piezoelectric effect, however researchers at the Institute for Frontier Materials have demonstrated for the first time that liquids can not only generate the piezoelectric effect but enhance energy storage technologies.

The piezoelectric effect is typically found in certain solid materials that can generate electricity when their shape is compressed. This phenomenon is used to power everyday electronic devices such as microphones, laptops and sensors. The first practical use of piezoelectric materials was during World War I for sonar technology to detect and locate submarines.

IFM researchers Masters student Žan Simon, Dr Bhagya Dharmasiri, PhD candidate Tim Harte, Professor Luke Henderson and RMIT’s Dr Peter Sherrell, demonstrated that solvate ionic liquids can generate the piezoelectric effect with bulk electrical potential when pressure is applied.

The IFM research group had previously investigated the use of solvate ionic liquids with carbon fibre for energy storage devices. Unusual observations led the team to investigate whether the piezoelectric effect could occur with their solvate ionic liquid as it does with an energy storage electrolyte.

“The piezoelectric effect has been studied in many materials before, but never in solvate ionic liquids,” IFM researcher and Masters student Žan Simon said. “By investigating this effect in solvate ionic liquids, we are exploring a completely new territory in which these liquids themselves could have an additive effect to energy storage devices.”

“The potential implications are significant. If solvate ionic liquids can generate electricity when stressed, it could lead to more efficient energy storage devices.

“Imagine a battery that not only stores energy but also generates additional power when it’s squeezed or bent during normal use. These findings open new possibilities for designing more efficient, multifunctional energy storage systems that could have far-reaching implications in fields ranging from portable electronics to electric vehicles and beyond.”

Spin Gapless Semiconductors: Pioneering Future Innovative Tissue Regeneration Battery Promotes Faster Wound Healing

Researchers at the University of Wollongong’s (UOW) Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI), in collaboration with Jilin University in China, have created a pioneering solution for wound healing using a bioelectronic patch powered by a magnesium-based battery.

The study demonstrates how this tissue regeneration battery can speed up skin repair by combining electrical stimulation with an anti-inflammatory chemical environment that supports healing.

The research, ‘A Mg Battery-Integrated Bioelectronic Patch Provides Efficient Electrochemical Stimulations for Wound Healing’, delves into the concept of a tissue regeneration battery and how all of the processes occurring during discharge can be used to promote skin regeneration. The paper was a collaboration between IPRI Director Distinguished Professor Gordon Wallace and Associate Professor Caiyun Wang with researchers from Jilin University.

There is much evidence to suggest that electrical stimulation plays a positive role in facilitating regeneration of various tissue types, including skin. The hardware traditionally used to deliver such stimulation is cumbersome. The batteries used are such that isolation from the tissue is required.

“The tissue regeneration battery (TRB) concept was conceived when we looked at conventional batteries and thought, what a waste of space and why are they not designed to interact with tissue directly?” Professor Wallace said.

“This work illustrates that if we are clever with electrode choice, we can address these issues and get more effective, direct electrical stimulation. Then we can take things to a new level by using the byproducts of battery discharge to provide a chemical environment that is anti-inflammatory and promotes proliferation of healthy cells.”

As with all batteries, the structure described in the paper comprises of two electrodes and an electrolyte.

Nanoscale Insights to Improve Organic Solar Cell Thin Films

A large international team led by scientists from the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Centre in Taiwan in collaboration with research groups in Germany from have provided an understanding of how nanoscale interactions affect the thermal stability of a type of next generation organic solar cells in research reported in ACS Applied Nano Materials.

Organic solar cells (OSCs) have numerous advantages, including flexibility, light weight, manufacturing economies, a wide range of applications, less environmental impact and semitransparency.

However, energy experts suggest there is a need for an increase in efficiency, as well as an improvement in long-term stability. Bulk heterojunctions (BHJs), a blend of electron donors and acceptors, need methods to optimise their structure at the nanoscale.

“The material tested in this study was a blend of a reputable polymer donor PffBT4T which provides good device performance and a new generation nonfullerene acceptor, ITIC, which was known to cause a performance drop,” explained Dr (Ian) Tzu-Yen Huang, lead author.

The blended material, which was tested in different concentrations of the donor and acceptor materials, is only tens of nanometres thick, approximately 1,000 times thinner than a sheet of A4 paper. Thermal annealing, heating up the material during manufacture, is done to improve the performance of a BHJ.

Measurements on the Spatz neutron reflectometer at the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering revealed how annealing above 150° C affected the vertical structure of the BHJs and caused structural instability. Thermal annealing made the interface of the BHJ thin films more diffuse at the interface in the ITIC molecules, increased aggregation in the ITIC and film roughness.

Making New Metamaterials With Quantum Dot Lego

Australian National University (ANU) scientists have created materials with surprising optical properties, from arrays of lego-like cubes, made of caesium lead tribromide. Caesium lead tri-bromide is in a class of material known as perovskites, and, as cubic nanocrystals of size ten nanometres, acts as a quantum dot.

By assembling the cubes like Lego into ordered spheres, or supercrystals, an international team, including researchers from the Research School of Physics were able to manipulate the wavelength and brightness of the light emitted from the structures.

The effect is due to the supercrystals operating as metaatoms: structures smaller than the wavelength of light, which, as arrays called metamaterials, exhibit behaviours completely unlike natural, homogenous materials.

This work shows the first use of meta-atoms made from smaller components, said the leader of the Nonlinear Physics Centre, Professor Yuri Kivshar. “The idea of composite meta-atoms appeared some time ago, but it came as a science fiction theory concept. It turns out that meta-atoms really can be made complex, with the properties being controlled at will. It is surprising that after several years we may say that science fiction became a reality.”

The team chose perovskite nanocrystals because they have an exciton resonance, which leads to strong fluorescence. Collaborators from ETH Zurich in Switzerland created the supercrystals using self-assembly techniques, to form spheres ranging from fifty to several hundred nanometres in diameter and sent them to ANU for the experiments.

ANU PhD Student Pavel Tonkaev then conducted photoluminescence experiments and was able to show that the supercrystals supported Mie resonances, which, combined with the exciton resonance, enhanced the fluorescence, speeding it up by a factor of 3.3.

The supercrystals also shifted the peak wavelength of the fluorescence, by an amount related to their size. Comparing their room temperature experiments with results at 6 degrees kelvin, they also saw the fluorescence peak split into two.

Professor Joanne Etheridge awarded Walter Boas Medal for Ground-Breaking Work in Electron Microscopy

Professor Joanne Etheridge FAA has been awarded the Australian Institute of Physics (AIP) Walter Boas Medal for Excellence in Research for her development of new methods to ‘see’ the structure of materials at the level of atoms.

It’s the first time a Monash University researcher has won the award in its’ 40-year history.

Her research improves the capability of electron microscopes, allowing scientists and engineers to observe and analyse structural features in materials that were previously unseen. Understanding the structure of a material is critical for understanding its properties.

These methods open up possibilities for material and device design in fields as diverse as energy storage and production, computing, drug delivery, sustainable energy, communications and lighting.

Professor Etheridge, who is the Scientific Director of the Monash Centre of Electron Microscopy (MCEM) and the Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, said she couldn’t have achieved the result without the support of the Monash scientific community.

"This award is a testament to the many talented researchers and students I have had the privilege to work with,” she said.

“It could not have happened without the exceptional research environment at Monash University, in particular the expert capability at the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy and more broadly in the School of Physics and Astronomy and Department of Materials Science and Engineering."

Professor Etheridge’s work utilises electron microscopy and diffraction which is a technique that uses beams of electrons to probe matter to determine its structure and composition. These methods are used to examine the structure-property relationships in distinctive materials.

Coffee Concrete Makes Debut in Major Infrastructure Project

An innovation developed at RMIT University has been used for the first time in a major infrastructure project, being laid into a footpath along a busy road in Pakenham as part of Victoria’s Big Build.

Major Road Projects Victoria (MRPV) and project contractor BildGroup have used concrete mixed with biochar made from spent coffee grounds, as a replacement of a portion of the river sand that is normally used, in the Pakenham Roads Upgrade.

Organic waste going to landfill, including spent coffee grounds, contributes 3% of greenhouse gas emissions. This waste cannot be added directly to concrete because it would decompose over time and weaken the building material, which is why the used coffee is converted into biochar before being added to the concrete mix.

Australia generates 75 million kilograms of ground coffee waste every year – most of it goes to landfills, but it could replace up to 655 million kilograms of sand in concrete because it is a denser material. Globally, 10 billion kilograms of spent coffee is generated annually, which could replace up to 90 billion kilograms of sand in concrete.

For this project, Earth Systems converted 5 tonnes of spent coffee grounds – about 140,000 coffees worth of grounds – into 2 tonnes of useable biochar, which has been laid into the 30 metres cubed footpath along McGregor Road in Pakenham.

The use of coffee biochar is one of several circular economy initiatives delivered for the Pakenham Roads Upgrade that include reusing the in-fill soil and material for the Princes Freeway embankments and using foam bitumen and rubber tyre road barriers.

MRPV Program Director Brendan Pauwels said coffee concrete had the potential to cut costs and remove vast amounts of waste material from landfill.

“These numbers are remarkable in terms of ecological benefit, and we’re excited to see the Pakenham Roads Upgrade be the first Victorian Big Build project to use the coffee concrete,” he said.

Quantum Computing Experts Conquer Entanglement Challenge in Silicon Chips

A team of UNSW quantum engineers has demonstrated a world-first: the quantum entanglement of two electrons, each bound to a different atom of phosphorus, placed inside a silicon quantum computer chip.

Entanglement is the most striking of quantum phenomena: two particles can exist in a state of perfect mutual correlation, while having no state of their own. Its consequences have baffled scientists and philosophers for decades.

“But today, entanglement is a resource, the most important one for building powerful quantum computers,” said UNSW Professor Andrea Morello, leader of the team that conducted the research.

The UNSW team specialises in building quantum computer devices where information is encoded in the magnetic orientation, or ‘spin’, of individual electrons, bound to atoms of phosphorus that are implanted inside an almost conventional silicon chip.

This approach to building quantum computers is very powerful: it combines the large-scale manufacturability of silicon computer chips – a trillion-dollar industry that underpins the totality of our digital world – with the minuscule size and natural quantum behaviour of atoms.

Dr Holly Stemp, the lead author of the paper, explained: “The spin of a phosphorus atom is an excellent quantum bit. But because the atoms are so small, it’s not easy to make them ‘talk’ to each other, let alone create genuine quantum entanglement. This is, in fact, the first time the provable entanglement has been created between two atoms in silicon. Electrons are not just particles but also waves, and when two waves overlap with each other, they give rise to the socalled ‘exchange interaction’, which is what we used here to entangle the atoms.”

From the strength of the interaction, the researchers estimated that the atoms are about 20 nanometres apart, or 1/1000th of the thickness of a human hair.

CSIRO Unveils Prototype Nanofibre Uniform to Safeguard Australian Troops

Researchers at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, have successfully developed a next-generation uniform prototype that employs nanofibres to safeguard Australian troops from chemical and biological threats.

The innovative material is a lightweight fabric that effectively filters out harmful particles while remaining light-weight and breathable, keeping the wearer comfortable in extreme temperatures.

CSIRO Manufacturing Research Unit Director, Dr Marcus Zipper said this textile innovation was the result of collaboration with industry and research partners, including DMTC. “Our nanofibre technology, pioneered by CSIRO scientists, has the potential to significantly improve the level of protection soldiers’ uniforms provide and can also be used for non-military applications, including protecting emergency responders and hazmat crews.”

“CSIRO research and development in materials science looks to improve how a particular material functions –we work across a broad range of advanced materials including metals, composites, polymers, adsorbents and nanofibres,” Dr Zipper said.

The initial phase of this project was funded by the Department of Defence. The successful nanofibre suit prototype was coordinated by DMTC Limited.

Also involved in supporting the project are Bruck Textiles, Defence Science and Technology Group and RMIT University.

CSIRO project lead Dr Yen Truong said key to the prototype’s success lies in its innovative nanofibre technology, developed by CSIRO scientists.

“We harnessed the unique properties of nanofibres to create a lightweight fabric that effectively filters out harmful particles while remaining highly breathable. In rigorous testing, the prototype surpassed all performance targets for air filtration, air permeability, thermal comfort, and chemical protection.”

Researchers Secure Grant To Transform Contaminated Biosolids into Sustainable Nutrient-Rich Fertiliser

Engineers have invented energy-efficient bricks with scrap Almost 350,000 tonnes of dry biosolids, or treated sludge from wastewater, are generated annually in Australia. This is a significant potential new nutrient source for the agriculture industry. However, heavy metals and emerging contaminants, particularly PFAS, found in biosolids is putting a considerable constraint on its use.

This research will investigate if the thermal conversion of biosolids to biochar creates a safe nutrient source for agricultural use.

A team at the University of Newcastle, led by Distinguished Laureate Professor Ravi Naidu and Dr Yanju Liu, has been awarded $919,840 from the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for High Performance Soils. This research will investigate if the thermal conversion of biosolids to biochar, the charcoal created when burning organic materials, creates a safe nutrient source for agricultural use.

While biosolids have been used as a rich source of nutrients for a long time, the recent discovery of the presence of PFAS in these materials has led to a ban on the use of biosolids in farming. As a result, millions of tonnes of biosolids are being stockpiled in countries globally.

This project aims to determine if turning biosolids in biochar will remove organic emerging contaminants ensuring its safe use as a slow-release fertiliser. It will also look at the benefits of biochar to soil health and soil texture improvement. This research will be critical for both the water and agriculture industries by providing strategies to use a current waste product as a viable and cost-effective fertiliser. It will be significant in assisting to minimise the biosolid stockpiles, leading to a reduction of billions of dollars in management costs.