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• Welcome from George Simon
• A brief history of the department
• Vale Peggy O'Leary
• IUPAC Macro 2006 (Wayne Cook)
• ARC Centre of Excellence for Design in Light Metals
• The CAST Cooperative Research Centre at Monash
• MCEM Monash Centre for Electronmicroscopy
• Hydrogen storage and permeation in metals and alloys
• ACES Australian Centre of Excellence in Electromaterials Science
• CRC-Polymers
• Nick Birbilis returns to Monash
• Professor Yuri Estrin joins Materials
• Profile of Nanotechnologist Udo Bach
• CAMT
• Late News

Australian Centre of Excellence in Electromaterials Science (ACES)

The Department of Materials Engineering is a major partner in the Australian Centre of Excellence in Electromaterials Science (ACES) together with School of Chemistry, University of  Wollongong and the Bionic Ear Institute.  Professor Maria Forsyth is the Associate Director of the Centre with Gordon Wallace the Director at Wollongong.  The activities of ACES fall into two key areas – Bionics and Energy – which are supported by a major platform of research in Synthesis and Characterisation of New Electromaterials.  These materials include conducting polymers, ionic liquids, polymer electrolytes, solid electrolytes, nanotubes, novel nano-structured electrode materials etc.

Within the department the key emphasis is in the Energy area with a significant effort in the field of Photovoltaic, especially novel electrolyte and electrode materials and assembly approaches to Dye Sensitized Solar Cells.   This work brings together a number of researchers in the department (Maria, Yi-Bing Cheng, Udo Bach) as well as in the School of Chemistry (Profs. Doug Macfarlane and Leone Spiccia).  In the area  of high energy density batteries based on Lithium, Maria’s group is collaborating with Prof. Liu in Wollongong to develop lithium microbatteries. Recently some exciting work in the field of Magnesium Bio-compatible batteries has evolved with the addition of Dr. Bjorn Winther-Jensen (who was recently awarded and ARC fellowship) to the department.  This battery will allow our Bionics colleagues to supply small amounts of current to stimulate the release of growth hormones from conducting polymers in order to stimulate nerve regeneration; a project within ACES ultimately aimed at spinal cord repair in collaboration with Dr. Graham Clarke).  The other major research activity at Monash within ACES is the formation and characterisation of passive films on reactive metals such as Aluminium and Magnesium alloys using novel materials such as the Ionic Liquids and organo-rare earth compounds.  Recent work shows some exciting results which suggests that excellent corrosion protection can be afforded to these alloys by these chemical treatments.
We are currently in the process of commissioning the new ACES labs and offices at Monash.  The university has spent more than $1.7M on a renovation which was completed in early 2007.  This has provided space for up to 32 people and five new laboratories including an electrochemical / characterisation,  a solar cell testing facility, a thin film preparation area, a synthetic (wet chemistry) lab and a corrosion testing area.

Maria Forsyth