Big expectations on a miniature scale

From within our spectacular new Resources and Chemistry Precinct, Professor Julian Gale is rebuilding the fundamental structures of some of nature's most complex creations to see what makes them tick.

Throw the word 'nanotechnology' into polite conversation, and you're likely to get a variety of reactions, many following a general pattern of apocalyptic prophecy and the 'grey goo' theory. But, as Professor Gale describes, there's much work to be done on even understanding the fundamentals of how our world is put together on a molecular level. Our conversation conjures up a world in which scientists have been forced to see problems only on a macro scale - the smallest visible grain of sand still a monolith compared to the infinitesimal scales generated on Curtin's custom software.

The experimentalist might say you're living in cuckoo land, you're off looking at fantastical things that can't be made, but occasionally you come up with ideas that inspire them to go away and do something different and actually make these things in the real world. 

"Working on a scale of individual atoms, we're looking at how we can use virtual models and computing to solve physical science problems," he explains. "Broadly, what we do is computational nanoscience. Within that, we have three main foci: clean energy, minerals and water." These three areas are some of the most hotbutton topics in the scientific world right now. From solid-state batteries to technologies for a hydrogen economy, the computer simulations developed by Gale and his team have the potential to instigate new developments in hundreds of future technologies.

"The beauty of computer models is that you can look at hypothetical possibilities," he explains of his work's potential. "The experimentalist might say you're living in cuckoo land, you're off looking at fantastical things that can't be made; but occasionally you come up with ideas that inspire them to go away and do something different and actually make these things in the real world. Experimentalists traditionally like a good challenge, and if you set a realistic one they're pretty good at achieving it."

The disconnect between physical experimentation and virtual simulation has long been constrained by two important factors: computing power and the age of the field itself. Compared to hundreds of years of scientific experimental process, computation has barely existed before the 1950s, and is only now gaining the necessary processing power to render an accurate picture of extremely complicated natural systems, even for tiny fractions of a second. But Professor Gale is excited by the many recent successful applications of virtual computer models to real-world experimental science, and expects a surge of this technology in the coming years. In the meantime, the pioneering work done by the team in studying crystal growth - for which Professor Gale was recently awarded an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellowship - is already showing practical possibilities in the field.

"Where computational nanoscience is starting to come into its own is in its application to specific real-world problems. Take the desalination plant at Kwinana. We have a situation where impurities in the seawater can collect on the reverse osmosis membrane. For example, dissolved carbon dioxide can grow into a limestone scale. This means the fi lter needs downtime to be cleaned, and more electricity to run it because the water needs to be forced through these blocked pores. But if we can understand how this problem occurs on the tiniest molecular level, we could potentially design a better membrane to suppress this process, or prevent it completely. It's about being smarter about how we do things through thinking small."