Page 37 - Materials Australia - April 2019

INDUSTRY NEWS
BREAKING NEWS
Curtin Home to New Equipment that Unlocks the Secrets of the Universe
Curtin University will be home to new equipment vital for gaining a better understanding of the Earth and its place in the Universe after AuScope received
$5 million in Federal Government funding.
AuScope supports the purchase, upgrade and maintenance of geochemical research
infrastructure at Curtin and a new replacement Sensitive High-Resolution Ion Microprobe (SHRIMP) age-dating instrument will be installed at the John de Laeter Research Centre at the University’s Bentley Campus.
Funded through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, the new SHRIMP will enable continued research
and innovation at the world- leading zircon geochronology facility at the centre.
Curtin University Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Terry congratulated the John de Laeter Research Centre team for presenting a strong case
for funding to upgrade the
existing 25-year-old SHRIMP.
“A quarter of a century ago, Professor John de Laeter led a proposal to commission
a new SHRIMP ion microprobe at Curtin, which would subsequently bring about new understandings of the Australian continent, the Earth’s tectonic plates and the age of the Solar System, among other breakthroughs,” said Professor Terry.
“This new SHRIMP instrument will enable the continuation of the important research that has been demonstrated over many years as having tremendous benefit to government, industry and academia.”
“The funding allows our researchers
to remain working at the forefront of
a science that shapes our collective understanding of the Earth and its place in
excellent materials for bio-scaffolding, absorption or filtration.”
“When we reformed the cellulose, we got something we didn’t expect: an aerogel with a unique porous structure and nanoscopic tunnels running through the sample.”
The IFM team used an ‘upcycling’ approach to get around cost-effectiveness issues.
“Any advanced technique requires the use of chemicals, which can then make the procedure less cost-effective,” Byrne said.
“We use environmentally friendly chemicals, and by upcycling our approach to create a more advanced material we can address the limitations affecting other less cost-effective methods.
“We are now entering pilot-scale trials and look to be at commercial scale within three to five years with industry support.”
Materials Engineers Find Way to Recycle Old Jeans into Artificial Cartilage
This article originally appeared in the October 2018 issue of create magazine.
Denim jeans could be transformed into artificial cartilage for joint reconstruction thanks to advanced textile recycling methods pioneered by researchers at Deakin University.
Deakin’s Dr Nolene Byrne and PhD candidate Beini Zeng have discovered how to dissolve denim and manipulate the remains into an aerogel: a low-density material with a range of uses, including cartilage bio-scaffolding, water filtration and acting as a separator in advanced battery technology.
Dr Byrne said the process works because denim is made from cotton, a natural polymer comprised of cellulose.
“Cellulose is a versatile renewable material, so we can use liquid solvents on waste denim to allow it to be dissolved and regenerated into an aerogel, or a variety of different forms,” she said.
“Aerogels are a class of advanced materials with very low density, sometimes referred to as ‘frozen smoke’ or ‘solid smoke’, and because of this low density they make
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