Position: Director Electron Microscope Unit and Professor in the School of Chemistry, University of New South Wales, Australia.
Field: Nanotechnology.
When we first interviewed Dr Richard Tilley he was a senior lecturer in the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences1 at Victoria University of Wellington. He also headed a Nanomaterials2 Research Group, and was a Principal Investigator for the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. A large part of Richard’s job was running the electron microscope facility of the MacDiarmid Institute.
Like many nanotechnologists, Richard did not start out in that field. He first trained and worked as a chemist3. He now works with nanoparticles and their applications, so he is a nanotechnologist, but still sees himself as a chemist as well.
Chemistry and nanotechnology4 are very complex subjects, but Richard thinks that his enjoyment of them has some very simple origins. He likes making things, and he is a very ‘visual’ person. As a nanotechnologist, Richard is continually making things, normally at a very small scale. “Really being the first person to make something, to me, is still a tremendous achievement and feeling, and that is really a strong driver for me.”
With the electron microscope5, essentially, what you are doing is seeing atoms, and you’re seeing how atoms are joining together, and that still gives me a tremendous rush and a buzz, each time I am really looking at atoms.
As a ‘visual’ person, Richard still gets enjoyment out of seeing the colours of different nanoparticles in solution and of seeing his quantum dots emitting coloured light. His work with microscopes gives him new ways of seeing things.
Update
In 2015 Richard was appointed Director of the Electron Microscope Unit and Professor in the School of Chemistry, University of New South Wales, Australia. see his profile here for information on his latest research and projects.
This article is based on information current in 2008 and updated in 2018.
Related content
Explore the work Richard and his team undertook making new nanoparticle shapes to increase the efficiency of catalysts and reduce poisonous6 emissions from car exhausts and investigating the use of quantum dots to find and eventually target drug7 delivery to cancerous cells.
- physical sciences: The sciences that explore the study of inanimate natural objects, including physics, chemistry, astronomy and related subjects.
- nanomaterial: Are materials having particles or constituents of nanoscale dimensions.
- chemist: A scientist trained in the science of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties.
- nanotechnology: Understanding and working with matter at the scale of atoms and molecules. 1 nanometre is a millionth of a millimetre.
- electron microscope: A microscope that uses a focused beam of electrons, rather than visible light, to magnify objects. Electron microscopes use electromagnetic coils to focus the electron beam (instead of the glass lenses used to focus light in optical microscopes). Traditional light microscopes magnify images 1000-2000 times, electron microscopes can magnify 300,000 times or more.
- poisonous: Capable of harming or killing by or as if by poison. A poisonous organism only delivers its toxins when eaten, touched or inhaled.
- drug: A pharmaceutical drug could be a medicine or chemical substance intended for use in the medical diagnosis, cure, treatment or prevention of disease.
