Trinity Scientist Wins NANOSMAT Prize
Posted on: 14 September 2015
Dr Werner Blau, Professor of Physics of Advanced Materials in Trinity College Dublin’s School of Physics, and Principal Investigator at CRANN, the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices, has been awarded the prestigious international NANOSMAT 2015 prize.
This prize honours and recognizes international scientists who have shown, during the course of their professional career, outstanding achievements in the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Dr Blau received the award from 2010 Physics Nobel Laureate A. Geim during a special ceremony at the beginning of the European NANOSMAT conference, which is taking place in Manchester.
Nanoscience is the study of structures and materials on the scale of nanometres.
Dr Blau said: “To give you an idea of how long a nanometre is, a sheet of paper is just under one million nanometres thick! When structures are made small enough—in this nanometre size range—they can take on interesting, useful properties, and this is why they are so fascinating to scientists.”
Nanoscale structures have existed in nature long before scientists began studying them in laboratories. A single strand of DNA, the building block of all living things, is about three nanometres wide, while the scales on a morpho butterfly’s wings contain nanostructures that change the way light waves interact with each other, giving the wings brilliant metallic blue and green hues. Peacock feathers and soap bubbles also get their iridescent coloration from light interacting with structures just tens of nanometres thick.
New, artificially created nanomaterials have wide-ranging and diverse applications in optoelectronics, renewable energy, environmental remediation, chemical catalysis, medical devices, consumer products and biomedicines. Nanometre-thin atomic crystals, such as graphene, have been rapidly developing for over ten years. Nowadays they are deemed as superstar materials with the potential to change the world in the 21st century.
An example of a recent research success by the Blau group is the use of nanoscale graphene membranes for renewable energy generation by osmosis.
There is a huge demand for appropriate solutions to the worldwide water and energy scarcity. Osmosis offers such a potential solution but although conventional osmotic membranes have been used for water desalination and power generation for decades, their commercial applications have been hindered by inadequate membrane properties.
Dr Blau’s research has, however, demonstrated that pristine graphene can be used to fabricate highly efficient composite membranes for this purpose.
He said: “I am delighted and humbled to receive such a prestigious award. Scientific research as I understand and practice it combines the fascination about the way our world works with a desire to address and solve important issues of our society, both on a local and global scale. Renewable energy and security of water supply are such topics that nanotechnology can address.”