Page 35 - Materials Australia - April 2019

INDUSTRY NEWS
BREAKING NEWS
Revolutionising Fertiliser for a Healthier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef and Australia’s delicate ecosystems will benefit from a research project that aims to cut the amount of nitrogen fertiliser that ends up in our waterways.
Researchers from the University of Queensland (UQ) are working to revolutionise fertiliser technology in a bid to prevent run-off and nutrient loss.
Researcher Dr Paul Luckman said today’s fertiliser technology was behind the times. “Plants only absorb around 50% of the fertiliser’s nutrients, with the other half released into the air, running into nearby estuaries or leaching into ground water.”
“There has been little innovation in the technology around fertilisers for the past 100 years. Most fertilisers used today are made to dissolve quickly and be immediately absorbed by crops, but if a crop
Manildra Group Technical Manager Mark Baczynski with Chemical Engineering Research Fellow Paul Luckman inspect the wheat starch blend.
Wheat starch blend tested as the controlled release fertiliser.
is in its early stages, it can’t always use what’s available and the fertilisers can be lost from soil,” said Dr Luckman.
UQ has formed a partnership with Manildra Group in an attempt to find a solution.
“We are working to create a fully biodegradable material that slows down the release of nutrients at the rate of the plant taking it up,” said Dr Luckman. “So we won’t have the problem of extra nutrients drifting around in the soil and ending up in our waterways and eventually running into the Great Barrier Reef.”
“We’re hoping that the collaboration will result in the creation of a commercially viable next generation fertiliser, specifically targeted for Australia’s sugar industry, to replace the current market fertilisers that are inefficient and costly,” said Manildra Group Technical Manager Mark Baczynski.
Quantum Scientists Demonstrate World-First 3D Atomic-Scale Quantum Chip Architecture
University of New South Wales (UNSW) scientists have shown that their pioneering single atom technology can be adapted to building 3D silicon quantum chips – with precise interlayer alignment and highly accurate measurement of spin states. The 3D architecture is considered a major step in the development of a blueprint to build a large-scale quantum computer.
UNSW researchers at the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T) have shown for the first time that they can build atomic precision qubits in a 3D device – another major step towards a universal quantum computer.
The researchers, led by 2018 Australian of the Year and Director of CQC2T Professor Michelle Simmons, have demonstrated that they can extend their atomic qubit fabrication technique to multiple layers of a silicon crystal – achieving a critical component of the 3D chip architecture that they introduced to the world in 2015. This new research was recentrly published in Nature Nanotechnology.
The group is the first to demonstrate the feasibility of an
architecture that uses atomic-scale qubits aligned to control lines – which are essentially very narrow wires – inside a 3D design.
What’s more, team members were able to align the different layers in their 3D device with nanometer precision, and showed they could read out qubit states with what’s called ‘single shot’—within one single measurement, with very high fidelity.
Left to Right: Study authors Dr Joris Keizer and Professor Michelle Simmons.
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