 This afternoon I'm going to talk about nanotechnology and opportunities and challenges and as Brian said that though I'm at the A in U and I also have some honorary appointments in other parts of the world and I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be able to interact with my colleagues in other parts of the world. So before I proceed further I would like to acknowledge my colleagues in my group and particularly these are the people who really make things happening and I really want to sincerely thank them and then without their contribution and without their work there's no talk here and I also have got a long list of collaborators in fact I haven't listed them and I collaborated with scientists from 25 plus countries and it's been great fun that's the beauty of science is to be able to really collaborate across the boundaries and work together to be able to really develop the technologies and understanding the world around us. And typically in my group typically I know 10, 12 nationalities at an age time and very bright young researchers and it's really fun to work with these guys and then I really want to sincerely thank them. And I also want to take this opportunity to thank our funding agencies, Australia Research Council and also Australia Federal Government with the NCRIS program which allows us to be able to really you know the establish and then access the facilities which are needed in order to be able to do the nanotechnology research which we are doing and also we get some funding from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research as well. So here is the overview of my talk and then I'm going to really tell you about what is nanotechnology and why nanotechnology is so important and how to make nanostructures and then some examples of nanotechnology in fact I'm not going to tell you about all about my own research then I thought that that may be too boring for you I may go too much into detail I just want to keep it at a level where you can really see and appreciate what nanotechnology can really have an impact in the longer term in the lives of the people in the society and I also put nanotechnology for cars because in fact in the earlier this year and then I happened to give a talk at the vintage and classic car club which I remember in fact that is my classic car and then Brian likes his Tesla's and I like old cars in fact that car car is old as as old as I am in 1957 or so so anyway but in fact Joe Mikhailov who is there and then my friend who helped me to really buy that car and I'll draw some conclusions there so what is nano and whenever we say nano we say that it's a billionth of a meter so when you say that billionth of a meter it sounds like words but you really don't have any appreciation of what that is and of course I can also talk about one a millionth of a millimeter but again it doesn't really make sense what is one billionth of a millimeter or so so really if you go and look at the scales here and then the ant is about five millimeters and dust mites are about 200 microns and then human hair is about 10 to 50 microns or so though I'm not qualified to talk about hair after losing all of it and I understand that all of our hair diameters of the width is quite different and so that's why you say that 10 microns to 50 microns or so and then the red blood cells are typically about two to five microns and then the DNA is about two and a half nanometers and five atoms of silicon is one nanometer or so so really we are talking about atomic scale when you talk about nanometer and then we really dealing with the atomic scale and manipulating atoms a carbon nanotube which I'll come back to is about two nanometers in diameter or so so really what we are trying if you take the planet earth and of our astronomer royal he is here and if you shrink the planet earth by some amount and to a size of a tennis ball and you take the tennis ball and shrink it by the same amount and you get to the nanoscale so that really gives you the dimensions of the so tiny tiny dimensions which we're dealing with I put you Lego blocks here and all of us played with Lego blocks when we were a child and then really we are trying to play Lego and of course using expensive tools and instead of using Lego blocks what we are doing is that we're using atoms and molecules engineering them to be able to make wide variety of structures and with the new properties so that we can use them for a wide range of applications and why nanomaterials are so important what is so interesting and exciting about nanomaterials when you take a material and you shrink it to the nanoscale two main things happen one thing is the surface atoms large surface to volume ratio the number of atoms which are on the surface becomes quite significant with respect to the number of atoms within the volume of the material so these atoms on the surface want to react with something so that's why you can use them for catalysis are sensing of various gases and a range of things here is a schematic of a carbon nanotube as you can see all the atoms are on the surface in the case of carbon nanotube and inside what you got is simply the air or vacuum so now in fact you can really use these carbon nanotubes fill this gap in this middle with hydrogen so that you can use it for hydrogen storage because hydrogen is seen as a clean gas which could be used in the future technologies in terms of you know running cars to all sorts of things and because you can have hydrogen and oxygen essentially as a byproduct is going to be water so that's why there's a lot of interest of stability to be able to store hydrogen not using big tanks which are going to be inflatable but we will to really be able to do that one atmospheric pressure or so also carbon nanotubes are lightweight and also high strength which I'll come back to and I'll tell you but also if you take a flat surface atomically flat surface you really make it as a nano structured surface something like this the properties change again the bulk material and then you end up changing a little bit of the surface properties like bumps like this and then essentially end up getting new properties in fact this nature does that beautifully which I'll come back to but the second thing which happens when you go to nano scale is the quantum effects come into picture so here's a material called cadmium selenide if I take a chunk of cadmium selenide it looks like that if I really try to get some light out of it it's the image light in the infrared region of the spectrum so you cannot see it but whereas the same cadmium selenide if I shrink it to the nano scale and suddenly the properties change I can get different colors of light so really I'm changing by the small amounts and I can get the blue light and green light and the red light I cannot explain that phenomena using classical physics so I need to bring in quantum physics which I'll come back to and I'll show you why they're important in fact these carbon these these the quantum dots we call them as nano crystals they could be used in the displays in fact Samsung recently released a TV called quantum dot TV or QD TV in fact they have already been using these quantum dots of nano crystals of the semiconductors in order to be able to get a bright colors and a crisp colors also in the TVs and our things so the same nano crystals could be used for solar cells and other applications as well so that's why there's a lot of interest in trying to understand the how the materials behave when you go to the nano scale and then try to use them for applying for a range of applications and the nature is already doing that so of course this I've taken some examples of nature so that to tell you that nature is already beautifully doing nano technology so the butterflies so of course we see lots of butterflies and they've got a beautiful colors so is the color coming from the chemical pigments or something else is happening why we see different colors of light been reflected from these the butterflies for example but it turns out if you go and look at these wings of these butterflies under an electron microscope you can see the bone material and then the some air gaps there if you go and look at the close-up of this one this bone material and air gap and bone material that changes the optical properties so thereby the light reflected from this structure will be different depending on how much gap is there and what is the width of that particular bone material or so it is nothing to do with the chemical pigments essentially structuring of the bone is the one which gives those colors it's a real in physics which is working very beautifully in the area of in the case of butterflies by by nature so that means we can be able to really try to understand for example you can different create different colors without having to use chemical pigments by essentially ordering the materials with some material and air gap and some material thereby depending on what is a bit of those materials you can end up having different colors of light or so but again when you go to the nano scale and you can create a faster computer chips which I will come back to you can put really more of memory and a faster communications and also higher energy efficiency in terms of making any of these electronic and wide variety of devices which we deal with so now let me come back to nature again lotus leaf in fact the structure which I showed you earlier and then I try to create the bumps on the surface and its properties change in fact that is the electron micrograph of the lotus leaf so we all know that whenever you put a droplet of water on the lotus leaf and then it doesn't wet the surface of lotus leaf that is because of this nano nanostructured surface which doesn't allow to really water to be in contact with this particular thing we call it as a hydrophobicity in science so really if the nature is already doing that can we learn from nature can we really mimic that so Brian has already mentioned about self-cleaning surfaces really can we really quote so for example the walls with some paint which can self clean itself so thereby whenever rain comes all the dust will be pulled the captured by these these water molecules water droplets because of the fact that the surface is not been vetted by because of the fact that you can have the nano particles in the paint for example so really we can do these things and in fact we can create fabrics so here is a case when if you spill wine and then of course you have to go home and then explain to your partner and how sloppy you have been or what you have been doing but whereas if they're not don't wet the surface of this fabric that means you don't even know that you have spilled the wine on your shirt and you don't have to go and clean it and all things so these hydrophobic surfaces are so and again already there are shirts available in fact president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has given me a tie which also has doesn't really doesn't get really wet or anything of that sort and which is really very interesting and you can in fact buy the fabrics and the things and again it is making use of the nanotechnology because you don't wet the surface or so so really nanotechnology is expected to have a huge impact on all industry sectors and in the case of medicine and health and a drug delivery targeted drug delivery which I come back to lots of treatments of cancer which I will come back to and also in information technology in terms of been able to really create high density data storage by using nanotechnology molecular switches for making transistors by using one molecular layer so thereby can really make one atom layer acting like a transistor it's essentially like a switch instead of using silicon which we are using and energy production for example hydrogen cars and the fuel cells for hydrogen and again made out of using nanotechnology and also flexible solar cells printable solar cells instead of using solar cells on the roof in the future you may have essentially a curtain which is and providing energy to you because you can really create the printable solar cells in the future in fact CSIRO is really developing some of this technology many groups are working globally as well but also new materials which are lightweight and stronger materials so that means you can really build skyscrapers and with using these stronger materials also which I can come back to and food and water and the environment again nanotechnology can help you to be able to do the environmental remediation by really really stabilizing the dirty materials which are real in the environment and be able to make them as a stable compounds and if there is any oil spill you can use smart membranes which are only sucking up the oil but won't do any sucking up of the water so thereby can really remove the oil spills and other things it's going to have a huge impact in this particular area but obviously you are developing also some instruments because whenever you are really developing new technologies you need to also develop the new instruments to be able to manipulate materials and also see what we are making because normal existing equipment is not able to look at that and be able to do that so the new technologies of new equipment is also plays an important role so of course some of my economic strengths and of course these days when you talk to anybody people want to know how much money are going to make and then your value based on that one and in fact luxury such cooperation in US has done this prediction in 2004 that nanotechnology based industries will be similar to the size of that of the information and communications technologies by 2020 or so and about 15% of the global manufacturing output will be dependent on nanotechnology and about 2.6 trillion dollars of economic activity is expected of that but till 2008 these projections were really been followed very well by this luxury such cooperation but of course in 2008 we had a global financial crisis the investment by the industry investment by the governments in the nanotechnology has been reduced so this may not happen in by 2020 it may happen by 2030 or so nanotechnology is going to make an impact in all industry sectors so how to make these nano structures and then we talk about two types of methods and one we call it as a top-down method and in this case essentially like a sculptor and take a stone or a piece of rock and then really sculpt structure so that you can really create the beautiful structures here so essentially that's what we do using this top-down process in fact silicon chips which are used in your computers and all things are made made using that particular process which I will show you some pictures of that and you can really go to as small as 10 nanometers using this particular technology which we call it as a top-down approach. The other approach is called as a bottom-up approach in this case what we do is that like a potter. Potter takes clay and then really molds into whatever the shape you want to have so instead of using clay what we are doing is that we are using atoms and molecules and then be able to create nanostructures we can make them as as small as one nanometer up to hundreds of nanometers or so so both the techniques one can use top-down approach and the bottom-up approach and the chemists and physicists and engineers like to do top-down approach and chemists like to do the bottom-up approach in my group we do both we try to combine both of them in fact you get the best out of both by best out of these structures whenever you combine both the top down and bottom-up approaches. So here is an example of a computer chip and in fact these days silicon and silicon wafers are like a dinner plate about 12 inch in diameter and then they are processed by the top-down processes and you can see that the features in this particular case is about 19 nanometers in this case. In fact this is a slide which I've created about 10 years back or so and I said at the time that by in we are using the features which have 19 nanometer feature sizes we'll be reaching the 20 nanometers in a date next decade or so but it turns out that by 2012 already we have reached the 22 nanometers 2014 Intel has already released the computer chips which have got the smallest features of 14 nanometers or so and Samsung has released in 2017 computer chips which have got 10 nanometer features and TSMC is expected to release 7 nanometer features from Taiwan Semiconductor Corporation and by 2018 or so we are really going to few atoms of silicon we are using to be able to make these transistors and then be able to really make these computer chips and all things so the smaller the devices you can pack more of them and smaller the devices you can switch them on and off faster that means you can do the calculations much faster than when you've got a larger size devices. In fact we have got we do the top-down approach as well in fact this electron beam lithography system in our laboratory and it's a two million dollar two million dollar machine and we can really write the patterns using electron beams and we can create features as small as 20 nanometers or so in fact we are now trying to really establish the future facilities whenever the NCRIS program gives us money to be able to even go to as small as two to three nanometers or so by using the top-down processes because the properties change quite significantly when you go to those dimensions so but whereas in the case of my colleagues in chemistry what they do is that they use a container like this and then they put one material which is in this case cadmium and then introduce small amounts of selenium here so thereby by controlling the temperature of this beaker here and then what they do is that they end up changing the size of these nanoparticles and then control it precisely so this is a so-called the bottom-up approach and in fact here is an example of the case where these cadmium selenium again an example where by changing them from 2.5 nanometers up to 1.4 nanometers you can precisely change the emission wavelength from these structures which are now currently used in TVs and displays and all things as well so really precise engineering and which can be done and by using the bottom-up approaches as well so it's a matter of what is your preference and what are the applications and which technique you want to do in order to be able to make these nanostructures for various applications in my own laboratory we have been doing one atom layer by one atom layer deposition and here I'm showing you mono layers one mono layer is about one quarter of a nanometer I got a four nanometer four mono layers that means about a nanometer it likes it tries to stay as a two-dimensional material and if I put one more mono layer and suddenly they form into these so-called quantum dots in fact we're demonstrated lasers made out of these particular devices and so this is what we were doing in 90s to mid 2000s or so trying to demonstrate a wide range of devices like lasers and photo detectors and other things so in terms of using this I'll show you lots of applications I've shown I've told you how do we make these nanostructures and here is an example of using nanomaterials or nanoparticles and for example if you're using nanoparticles of zinc oxide which is used in the these days in the sunscreen for example and they are so tiny and then the visible light can pass through and that means you don't see any light being reflected back or scattered back but then they absorb the UV light so that's why when you apply something like this you don't even see you applied this sunscreen because of the fact that they're allowing the visible light to pass through that's why you don't see that you applied that one but at the same time they're doing a good job for you but whereas if you use a but a micron size particles in the sunscreen you see this you know zinc cream and other things and you can see light being scattered and then you can see the difference between a nanoscale sunscreen to the the micronscale sunscreen and then big difference in terms of the light scattering properties again we can use these nanoparticles of zinc oxide or titanium oxide in paints for example the wood gets degraded because of the UV radiation in the sunlight so now if you can have a paint which only absorbs the UV light but don't allow don't absorb the visible light that means you can really still see the the the patterns in the wood and other things but still they're protecting the wood thereby wood can last for longer time which is very environmentally friendly as well so also that people have been developing this so-called super paramagnetic materials so in this case use nanoparticles of magnetic materials you can functionalize them so that you can really send them to your brain where you got a brain tumor these nanoparticles only attach themselves to the brain tumor so then from outside you can apply the magnetic field on and off on and off by doing that one what happens is that this nanoparticle is magnetized de-magnetized and then start generating heat the amount of heat generated is sufficient to be able to kill the tumor without affecting the surrounding brain so that means the side effects are less and you're also precise engineering you're able to do that one so really these nanoparticles are really opening up a lot of opportunities some people are using cerium oxide nanoparticles in fuel tanks so that you can get more efficiency from the existing fuels as well so these nanoparticles have been widely used for a range of applications so when i talk about tennis balls and these are tennis balls here you can see that whenever you got after some time the air has been leaking out and because of the fact that you have a nano nano size pores in this rubber so then air leaks out so now if i can put nanoparticles which are really filling these gaps so that means air is not going to leak out so that means you can use your tennis balls for a longer time and wilson has already developed this one about more than 10 years back or so and that means you're able to use this already nanotechnology in your day to day life but also the food packaging and whenever you say that the food is spoiled that's because of the oxidation because of the packaging allows the small amounts of oxygen to leak through gradually and after some time food gets spoiled so now if you can really fill these gaps in this packaging by using nanoparticles so thereby don't allow the oxygen to get in so thereby can use the food for a longer time without wasting it and that's why the people are really developing nano packaging for food packaging and other things as well some of you might have heard of graphene this wonder material which has led to Nobel prize in 2010 probably this is one of the materials which has led to Nobel prize from the development to the Nobel prize within six or seven years or so so this is nothing but a layer of graphene sorry carbon so if you take graphite and then essentially what you got is a layer of carbon one on top of the other graphite is a very soft material and you can use it for lubricants and all things but when you only take peel off one layer of this carbon which like a sheet like this and then these properties are extremely strong so this is one of the strongest material we can really think of you can really make in the in the in the world currently for example but again you can take this one sheet of carbon and then fold into a ball and then we get something called bucky balls and then they end up having quite different properties you can also fold them in this in this way then you create the so-called carbon nanotubes everything is one layer of carbon you fold it and you end up getting new properties again those carbon nanotubes which I will come back to so really very very exciting area it's used for electronics applications as well as mechanical applications or so because of in fact it turns out that this one has not been done using any exotic materials professor Geim and his student what they have done is that they've taken graphite it took in taken a scotch tape and just peeled off one layer and then tried to study those properties then they found very interesting properties from those ones and in fact this is a one atom layer thick graphene here it is also transparent which could be used for displays and because it's a strong material which could be used for a range of applications like pressure sensors to resonators and other things it's also very good electronic material which could be used for transistors and displays and a range of things so this graphene is really opened up a lot of opportunities of how to really do research on the 2d materials one atom layer thick really precisely one atom layer thick even we are talking about less than one nanometer or so so taking this carbon and then you fold this way and then you create the so-called zigzag pattern of the carbon nanotubes but if you fold this way you end up getting this arm chaired patterns here so this nanotube has got a quite different properties than this nanotube one of them acts like a metal like a silver or gold one of them acts like a semiconductor like silicon which is used in our computer chips so it means the same material how you fold it changes properties quite significantly again these carbon nanotubes are very strong and people are trying to really develop a range of things so here is an example of the case where in fact at the ANU research school of physics and my colleagues have developed these single walled carbon nanotubes multi-wall carbon nanotubes or even bamboo shaped carbon nanotubes are so they all have got quite different properties and then we are trying to understand their properties and then thinking about how can we use them for example they could be used for bullet proof fabrics if you can really have at fabrics which are embedded with the carbon nanotubes because of their strength and bullets cannot go through and then people are really now trying to develop these sorts of fabrics embedding these carbon nanotubes because of their strength but also lightweight because of the fact that they're only talking about a one atom layer of carbon which has been really created these carbon nanotubes and also people are trying to develop composites using these carbon nanotubes or so for example lots of composite materials have been used in A380 which is about 15 tons lighter than that of the any aircraft which are dealing with that means they can go long distances also mechanically they are very good materials that means you can really have they can flex about four meters or so while takeoff and other things but of course these are all some of the sites are from us and you can also see some stealth bombers and other things also because if you can use you know lightweight materials and also stronger I can also use less fuel that means they can go to long distances and be able to do the task which is needed by the community the purpose which is the task which mission which you have got let me know towards medicine in fact the most exciting things which we are expected to have with the nanotechnology is in the area of medicine it's moving towards personalized medicine so in fact the National Institute of Health in US has created a separate center called Cancer Nanotechnology where you can detect cancer at early stages of development and also be able to treat cancer precisely in a targeted way so here is an example of the case where this work has done at Harvard University Charlie Lieber's group what they've been doing is that we make these nano wires and we functionalize them so that they will only be picking up one particular cancer marker in this case simultaneously you're able to detect a multiple cancer markers simultaneously so that means you don't have to do one test for one another one to another one that means it becomes really point of care the detection you can go to a doctor you can take a drop of blood and within minutes you'll be able to really see whether you got cancer or not rather than you have to wait for a one week or two weeks and then worry about you know what's your reality is going to be really single molecules of cancer can be detected in fact this is an important thing for example if you wait till your cancer is detected then it's metastasized that means you really have to be bombarded with the entire body with the heavy doses of chemicals radiotherapy and chemotherapy if you can detect at the early stages of at a single molecule level so that means you can start the treatment at a much earlier stage before the cancer metastasizes that means you got a much better prognosis in terms of being able to live for longer period or so so for example you can use a wide variety of nanoparticles for really treating cancer polymer materials and polymer micelles and the carbon nanotubes essentially filling these ones with the drugs which you want to really transport and then be able to precisely transport them to the localized cancer cells and then activate them at this place so here's the case where you got a cancer cell and then this polymer coated drug molecules which have been really transported through this membrane and then they get into this one and then start destroying this tumor because it's a targeted one you don't have any side effects they're targeted to only attach themselves into the cancer tumors but not other parts of the body use less amount of drugs and that means you have less side effects and also low cost as well so this targeted drug delivery is going to really revolutionize the way we treat people so now let me move towards water and energy so really i'm giving you a broader perspective of where the nanotechnology is going to have an impact water you know that billions of people don't have a clean drinking water so that's a major challenge for us as a humanity so again nanotechnology is expected to have a huge impact in terms of desalination nanofilters which will allow only the water molecules to get through and then the salt molecules cannot get through by using the nano pores in these nano membranes for example but also you can use photo catalysis so thereby you can really clean the water wherever you have and thereby you're able to really provide a much cleaner drinking water and then the uv leds which we are working on in fact depunker is here in the audience and i'll come back and i'll show you energy energy is a major global issue this is a number one global issue for the humanity all over the world in fact you may lose even your prime minister's position if you really don't get the right policy in terms of that it's a controversial issue as well so really nanotechnology is expected to have a huge impact in terms of photovoltaics that means solar cells and whenever you say that solar cell is 20 percent efficient 80 percent of the energy is wasted in heat can we really develop materials which can convert the heat into electricity that is called thermoelectrics and again hydrogen separation membranes hydrogen storage and again hydrogen economy purposes photo catalysis where you can take water and then be able to split into hydrogen and oxygen so that you can really create create clean hydrogens from the clean source of water without having to use hydrocarbons and petrol and other things and the fuel cells and super capacitors and solid state lighting i'll try to cover some aspects of these ones so solar cells already people have developed solar cells using the materials which we work on at about 46 percent efficient solar cells your rooftop solar cells may be about 15 percent efficient or 20 percent efficient and people have already developed 46 percent efficient solar cells so the only problem is they're expensive so where can we use these solar cells and of course space applications in fact these solar cells have been developed for space applications by Boeing national renewable energy laboratory in us and franhofer in Germany or so so by stacking different materials you can really get very high performance solar cells so once the 40 percent efficiency is exceeded and people now started thinking about how can we use these space solar cells for terrestrial applications on the ground so if you got these concentrator systems and you can see that you're collecting the light from the sun and concentrating into about 500 cents or 1000 cents here because the system cost is so high and then the additional cost of the solar cells is not that significant people want to really use high efficiency solar cells and these are this multi-junction solar cells and there you want to keep it here so thereby you'll be able to collect all the light which has got from the sun about 500 cents intensity or so and become able to convert into electricity it is becoming economically viable even for terrestrial applications so that's why there's a lot of interest out there so here's a case where in this case what we do is that we use three different materials we stack one on top of the other so this material absorbs this part of the solar spectrum this material absorbs this part of the solar spectrum this material absorbs the other part of the solar spectrum so that's why you're able to get those efficiencies as high as 46 percent or so in fact we have been working in some of these material systems and what we're doing is that how can we reduce the cost because okay you don't have to you cannot have in your backyard huge large solar concentrator system and can we make some nano structures of nano wires of these materials and then we embed them in a polymer material so that you can really attach them onto the roof and then the challenge is to be able to get the high efficiency at a low cost so that's where the challenge is whenever you're developing these technologies we want to be able to make them affordable and also at the same time most efficient so typically if you want to have of course this is an old slide maybe the cost might have come down a bit a 14 percent solar cells typically cost about hundred dollars per square meter and our aim is to be able to make them for one dollar per one meter square so that's what the aim of these sorts of new technologies which we are trying to develop nanotechnology for cars again cars nanotechnology is going to have is expected to have a huge impact lighter and stronger materials that means fuel efficiency and safety improved engine efficiency of fuel additives and catalysis and reduced environmental impact in tough using hydrogen and fuel cells and a range of things including electric cars of Brian's favorites so longer service life and lower component failure rate and small smart materials even to self repair themselves so whenever you got a dent and a material can really repair itself and it come back to this one so that means you don't have to worry about that so in fact sensors of course nano nanotechnology based sensors are expected to be in the cars already we're using a range of sensors and for example if your airbag sensors and all things are all already made out of these MEMS technology which is nothing but the nanotechnology and people are expecting that large number of nanoscale sensors will be used for example here again it's an american slide here and you'll see gallons and pounds and all things and so currently as you know that the fuel consumption is very much dependent on the weight of the car if you can really reduce the weight of the car to about 750 pounds so for my australian n colleagues and divide that one by two approximately of kilos at about three seventy three fifty kilos or so and you'll be using about one gallon for a hundred miles about 160 kilometers and about 3.8 liters of petrol or so so really by using these lightweight stronger materials and efficient engines you'll be able to really reach that point and again some of these carbon nanotubes and other materials could be used as a composites but the challenge is some of these materials are quite expensive and then we want to be able to really go from two three dollars or million dollars per kilo to four dollars a kilo so that's where the challenge is how do we really make these technologies really economically viable so that we can have widespread use super capacitors so whenever you're dealing with electric cars and then you always use batteries and of course sometimes you can also use fuel cells in some of the cars and then the problem with batteries is that they got a high energy density that means you can go long distance but their power density is pretty low so you need to use a super capacitors when you're starting the car so that you get the momentum which is needed and you can the next the batteries will take over these capacitors again super capacitors are made out of nanotechnology and if you use a nanoporous material these nanoporous materials have got a large surface area larger the area higher the capacitance in fact CSIRO has developed these super capacitors in fact they started a company called CAPEX which is already manufacturing these super capacitors in fact done by one of the alumni of the new Calum Drummond while he was at CSIRO and the super capacitors and battery technologies are very much reliant on the nanotechnology because of the fact that you've got a large surface area you'll be able to store more energy much more efficiently but again in the case of batteries people want to be able to have the batteries which have got a range of at least 350 kilometers and be able to recharge in three minutes of course current batteries you cannot recharge them that quickly so if you're going and changing your petrol it takes about five minutes the same period can really have the batteries which can be charged that quickly so these are some of the technological challenges again nanoparticles of this lithium titanium oxide or lithium manganese oxide have been used as anode or a cathode and then some of these batteries have been being developed now and they could also potentially be not only used for cars and also for laptops and other practical devices like your phones and all things as well so whenever we talk about energy we only talk about generation of energy we should also be thinking of utilization of energy as well because if we don't do that one and we're wasting a lot of other energy which we are really generating that means we are unnecessarily creating more greenhouse gas emissions so here is the case of the night world in night and of course you cannot have this picture it's a composite picture created by NASA you can see America brightly lit and Europe and India and so the in of course Asia and Japan and Australia of course most of the population in the coastal region and New Zealand here so really we are used about 20 percent of the electricity is used for lighting purposes so for example that's a us example here again if you can reduce the energy consumption or improve the efficiency by one percent you only you don't need five gigawatt power plants in us alone so now we can imagine that how many power plants you don't need if you can really improve the efficiency of these lighting systems as you know that we have started off with the lighting from the fire and then of course we're gone for the incandescent lamps and the fluorescent is only five percent efficient fluorescent lamps are compact for us are about 25 percent efficient the LED technology which has started in only late 90s or so now already reaching about 50 percent efficiency or so so as most of you know that in Canberra and of our government has provided us LED lights that means we are consuming less energy that's a good way to do it but of course the next generation technologies will have even a much more efficient devices if you can replace this 25 percent efficient lights with 50 percent efficient lights about 50 gigawatt power plants are not in us alone but now we can imagine again how much energy savings we can have by using utilization of the energy much more efficiently and white LEDs in fact we work on these materials in fact some of my students are manufacturing a few million LEDs a month in China and they've done PhDs with us here in fact again development of the blue LED was a major challenge in fact the colleagues from Japan those who developed that one have won the Nobel Prize in 2014 and then the Nobel committee said not only the development of the blue LED environmental impact of that work which is really helping the society and that's why they've been given that particular thing so what you could do is that you can take UV LED or a blue LED and put a phosphor you end up getting white light and that's how people are really using these technologies and so really it becomes a commodity product but of course efficiencies have been improved with time and in fact we expect to have much more efficient devices so now let me move towards my own research and what I tried to do in the last few minutes or so as Brian said that he wants to listen what I'm doing and so I told you in the broader sense where the nanotechnology is going to impact in our daily lives so we work on semiconductors and we work on slightly different semiconductors so silicon is a workforce for the microelectronics industry but unfortunately silicon is not a very good light emitter so that's why we have to use materials like gallium nitride, indium nitride these combination of these materials in this group three of the periodic table and a group five of the periodic table so whenever you're making these blue LEDs and other things they're all made out of this gallium nitride indium nitride technology and then the red ones are made out of this gallium indium phosphide technology or so so we work on these materials to develop the LEDs and lasers and other things so for example when you're dealing with optical fibers internet whenever you are sending information whether from your phone or from your computer and your electrical signal need to be converted into light signal and we work on these lasers and then you switch these lasers on and off to send information through an optical fiber on the other end you have to convert that light into electricity again so that you can hear the voice or otherwise you get your data back so we work on these photo detectors on this end as well so really some of the lasers which we developed in 90s are already currently being used in internet which is pumping these internet optical fibers and other things and now we are developing the next generation if i've got a laser which is small and then i can switch it on and off faster that means i can send information much faster and the smaller devices also consume less energy in fact five percent of the world's electricity you currently use for internet and in fact it's doubling usage every 10 years or so so really we need to develop the technologies which consume less energy much faster because we all want to have faster technologies and so that's where we are developing some of these LED technologies and photo detector technologies again this LED technology has led to solid state lighting and a large area displaced based on the LED TVs again are making use of some of these LED technologies some of us have developed of course many groups work globally as well again infrared detectors which are developed using these materials for biomedical imaging applications night vision applications or so and again solar cells which i've already talked about so really these these are the materials which are very interesting and exciting UV LEDs why we want to have UV LEDs you know when you talk about purification of water and using membranes and other things is one way and exposure of the bacteria and other things to UV light you can kill them because it's a UV UV radiation will really changes their DNA and other things so really one of the challenges is that currently we use these large sterilization plants and in the the operation theaters and others but they also use the toxic materials like mercury and they're not very efficient if you can really make light emitting diodes everything in the UV light that means you can have a light where you can put into this water which is not very good and within minutes you should be able to drink that water because all the bacteria have been killed and even you can have a bottle and which has got this LED light so that means you know you fill that part one and switched on and then be able to drink it wherever you go sort of thing but again the efficiency of these LEDs is also not as good as we would like it to be in fact this is a phd project which the panker is working on using this hexagonal boron nitride again a two-dimensional material we're really trying to understand how to make these things how to make this UV LEDs most efficient and again with low energy consumption as well and we've been developing some smallest lasers in the world and i told you that smaller the lasers and they consume less energy you can switch them on and off fast and in fact this is a work of my student Drew Saxena who is now a postdoc in imperial college and essentially we make these lasers and these are i can put about 20 lasers within the width of your hair of course depends on what is the width of your hair i told you it's quite big or quite it can change and really they're tiny tiny lasers i cannot see them with my naked eye but they're emitting light which i can see the light which is coming out of those ones so that means i can pack more lasers in a particular package i can send more information much faster and so these are the next generation laser technology which we are developing for the internet applications so again terahertz radiation and we used to do we have got a lot of electronics we talk about microwaves and millimeter waves and when you talk about light we talk about up to infrared radiation or so but there's a gap called terahertz radiation and in fact terahertz radiation is very useful for a wide range of applications for example many of the molecules have got fingerprints in the terahertz part of the spectrum for example lactose and anhydrides and other things and also explosives these explosives have got the signatures in the terahertz part of the spectrum in the past there were no technologies which were not available where you are able to detect them from a distance so we're developing some of these technologies and again terahertz radiation is reflected metals are reflecting the terahertz radiation so that means you know you don't have to use x-rays anymore you should be able to really detect and most importantly terahertz radiation is non-ionizing that means if you have terahertz radiation is exposed and your body is not going to be affected but i cannot say the same thing with x-rays so that's where people are really developing these x the terahertz scanners and other things and again you can look at the cavities in the teeth and people are talking about even you having a wireless communications there you got a chaos there and essentially you take a phone or whatever the device you have and wirelessly you can download this information because terahertz frequencies are very very high frequencies with respect to microwave frequencies also which you're talking about so that's why there's a lot of interest including even in the agriculture where you can even look at what amount of water content in the leaves so thereby you can determine when you want to water the plants so thereby you can conserve your water resources quite efficiently we've been developing both the sources and detectors and this is the work of koon pang who just left for oxford university as a postdoctoral fellow and then these detectors are very efficient detectors which have got a bandwidth of about 0.1 terahertz to about three terahertz or so and using two different antenna designs which i won't go into details but the key thing is that we're developing technologies are very very tiny again i can put multiple detectors so that to get a beautiful image so that i can be able to really look at your teeth which is that image which i showed you is not as good you can be able to look at them much more precisely so that we'll be able to really the dentists will be able to identify those ones thereby dentists don't really start taking too many pictures using x-rays which is also not good for you in the longer term solar cells again i was telling you we are working on nanowire solar cells and again we are working with oxford university a flexible solar cells we are embedding these nanowires within a polymer material so that means you can really take these things out and you can put your backpack or on on on your car roof or anything of that sort and again the challenge is to be able to make them efficient and economically the viable processes and again that's what something which we're trying to understand how these solar cells work and again some of the students those are working in these sorts of topics are sitting here in the audience as well splitting of water and of course the challenge is that you know of course the dream has always been can we really split water and then be able to do it efficiently you can in fact split water very easily by using electrolysis process of putting two metals into water and apply some electric field or so but then the efficient process is not that efficient so we are developing some semiconductor photo anodes and cathodes thereby shine the light and then they create the so-called electron hole pairs and they go and start oxidizing water so thereby we'll be able to really create most efficient hydrogen source using water and then use it as a fuel and then be able to combine with oxygen and then be able to get water again so that means it's a very clean energy cycle but of course the efficiency of the technology is currently is not that good and again nanotechnology I was telling you because a large nanosurface area which helps us to be able to really make these as a most efficient photo catalysis processes which we're really working on again some of the students and post docs and colleagues those are working in this area have been listed there let me finish off with the last topic which I want to cover the brain and and the neurons as all of us know that of course most of our functions are emotions of a vision or movement or language or emotions and smell intelligence and decisions they're all due to the functions which are in the brain and all of us have got about 100 million neurons they're all formed into nice networks like this these are the individual neurons and they're all connected using something called processes and you create these neuronal networks so now if I got the injury for the brain to the brain so then what happens that you have a loss of memory or movement or vision and can we really restore this neuronal circuit which have been broken due to neurological disorders or due to brain damage due to one accident or the other and already some work has been carried out in tissue engineering to be able to repair the spinal cord injuries and also peripheral nerve injuries can we do to the brain to that one really that's a major holy grail in the neuroscience can we first of all of course we have to understand brain we know so little and then whenever you learn you do more research you realize you'll so know even more you realize that you have known much little than what you thought of your own sort of thing so it's a very complex by the way very energy efficient machine it only uses less than 100 watts of energy and it does the functions which are which are a supercomputer cannot do of course memory also and all things really brain is a great machine and so what can we do so whenever you got this neuronal structures like this and whenever you got a damage and of course you have a problem can they put a neural patch here can I remove this damage so thereby can make the new the connections back so thereby can I get the functions back again or not so in fact this is the work of Vinny Gautam my postdoctoral fellow in fact who came to join her husband in the earth sciences who is a DECRA fellow and so it is a project which we just started without any funding and she works jointly with our John Curtin School of Medical Research and also our engineering colleagues between physics and engineering and neuroscience it's a truly multidisciplinary project and this would have not happened without Vinny and her skills so again that's a key people are important in addition to money of course which I'm sure that which I can get from our vice chancellor so sometime right so here's a case where we have created these nano scaffolds of this indium phosphide nano wires which we have made in our laboratory using this so-called the top down process and the bottom up of processes as well here is a neuronal cell you can see these processes beautifully follow these patterns very nicely you know they like to go along particular process here this is a cell body and then they're making these things I'm only showing you one neuronal cell so what will happen if you got a more neuronal cells so they really form into beautiful networks you can see these these are the neuronal cells and then of course they're all forming into nice network and this is a part where they got this nano scaffold of the nano wires which we have really created in an ordered pattern or so so now we'll try to go and look at these ones and in fact Vinny what she does is that she does some calcium imaging she puts a calcium dye and then start taking videos of those things whenever these neurons are opening up and firing the action potentials and then this new calcium ions are really creating the green light and she takes a video of that here's a case of the video for the nano scaffolds where she has grown and also she has grown some neurons on the plain glass as you can see these neurons are randomly distributed so now what she does is that if neuron is firing what is happening to the other neurons and she creates these correlation maps and thereby she can see whether they're talking to each other they're randomly firing the signals and so thereby we can really understand how these things are working so whenever you've got this glass slide neurons and you can see that they're all firing at different times you know there's a time here and then these are the signals which she has been measuring using calcium imaging so when we've done this once which are on these nano scaffolds as you can see they're beautifully firing all at the same time indicating that there's some sort of a synchronized correlated activity is taking place they're talking to each other that means you can really start thinking about how can they really make new connections and be able to make new new new communications and a new synaptic connections and other things in fact Vinny has gone to Melbourne and then gave a talk to the neuroscientists in Melbourne and then they're all quite excited about it and started asking her can you grow epileptic neurons can you grow autistic neurons can you grow various neurological disorder neurons can we really bring the functions back or not in fact they've also tried to convince her Melbourne is a place to do neuroscience not Canberra and why don't you move to Canberra and in fact I have to convince her that look you know Canberra is a great place we can always collaborate and I collaborate people from all over the world and we don't have to worry about it in fact today only she mailed these nano scaffolds to Wollongong because one of the colleagues in Melbourne she moved to Wollongong and they're going to grow the stem cells and of the humans to see how these neurons are growing other things it's a really exciting project but only problem is that she has got only funding till January or so she has applied for DECRA and I'm hoping and praying that she'll get her DECRA fellowship so that she can we can be able to continue this project this is really exciting and stimulating project for me along with other projects which we work on I'm also learning a lot because Vinny teaches me more about neuroscience because I don't know much about neuroscience than why they teach her sort of thing that's again having good students and postdocs make all the difference because they are the ones those are in the lab and making things happening and I've been very fortunate I've had wonderful group of students and postdocs and young researchers and academic colleagues and collaborators all over the world and that's what they've made my life so much fun let me finish off and I think I've told you some nanotechnology and I can maybe if I were to give a simple summary we are having great fun that's a message which I want to convey that is the purpose of science as well so I always tell people that the purpose of the university is to really train the next generation of scientists and engineers and of course other academics as well as as well as really explore new ideas if any technologies come leading to companies and all things that's a bonus but really exploring ideas is the main job of and training people is the main job of the universities and as you can see that it's a really emerging technology and enabling technology and it's going to have huge implications in terms of really using this nanotechnology for a range of applications and one last point which I want to make is environmental toxicological effects and ethical and life cycle issues need to be addressed are considered whenever we're developing new technologies we should not blindly go and develop something without thinking through what are the implications of these technologies in the longer term rather than we really look at after 10 years oh we made something wrong and we should have done something different so that's why life cycle issues are really important when you're dealing with nanotechnologies let me leave with one slide and I started my life in a small village in India studied in front of a kerosene lamp till I finished year seven and I lived with my high school math teacher to be able to finish my high school or so and so many people helped me in my life and as a gratitude to all of them and my wife and I have started an endowment to be able to help people from the developing world we get a lot of interns from Europe and America and all but many times when any interns want to come and spend some time at the A and U they all need financial support because european students come with their own support and we always say used to say no and I was feeling guilty for the last 20 years or so a couple of years back also we started this endowment last year we had four students came from India some of the brightest students you can really have from IITs and this year we had six students and one in the end academic also so really this is something which we really want to really help and support and grow that one and of course I understand that any donations to the A and U are tax deductible as well and one of the most interesting things which I really want to point out is that more than 700 million african families do not have access to electricity so as you know that I can tell you based on my firsthand experience then using kerosene lamps are really detrimental for health till I finished my year seven I used to get sick all the time now I realize that this must be due to smoking breathing of the kerosene lamp the fumes so also the education is a major challenge because very limited amount of light is available so because of the development of the nano technologies based on the led technology and solar cell technology now we can really provide these solar lanterns or solar lamps and by donating about five four pounds at approximately eight dollars or so you can really make a difference to a african family and help the end person to study and improve their health as well today I have donated about 700 lamps and I want to donate 3000 lamps by the time I retire and again I want you to think and what difference you want to make to the world and I hope you will really join these sorts of things and be able to really make contribution to people those who really need help sort of thing finally I want to thank you for your attention