Engineering at the micro/nanoscale has the capacity to revolutionise the future of technology across a wide spectrum of industries such as the energy, biopharmaceutical, military, aerospace, materials and manufacturing industries. Nevertheless, micro/nanoscience poses significant challenges. At these scales, continuum theories break down and intermolecular or interfacial forces dominate.

The Micro/NanoPhysics Research Laboratory, managed by Drs Yeo and Friend, conducts fundamental and applied research in elucidating the physical mechanisms that are responsible for phenomena at these scales and in exploiting these phenomena for a variety of applications, with publications in high-impact international journals and conferences from work by the staff, including post-doctoral, PhD, and undergraduate students, with an associated course on the area. The lab also hosts visitors from time to time.

Researchers in the laboratory have developed cutting-edge technology for pulmonary drug delivery, drug encapsulation in biodegradable polymeric excipients, bioscaffold generation for tissue/orthopaedic engineering and wound care therapy, microactuators with sub-nanometer-accurate positioning and multiaxis operation, rapid micro-mixers for high-throughput drug screening microarrays, and, bioparticle concentrators/detectors for pathogen detection in biosensors. Current efforts are being focused on developing fully-functional prototype miniaturised devices for these applications that are close to commercial realisation.

Fundamental studies are also being pursued. The laboratory has expertise in microelectromechanical device design and optimization using analytical and finite element analysis approaches, and the theoretical modelling of evolving liquid interfaces using analytical, semi-analytical and fully numerical techniques.