A University of Queensland researcher is challenging the notion “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” in the world of many everyday products.
Dr Michael Monteiro, a materials chemist with UQ’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, is looking at better ways to make complex polymer architectures – the basic building blocks that make up common products such as paint, carpets and coatings.
“In the past when a polymer was found to work for an application, people modified it by adding other polymers to get better properties,” Dr Monteiro said.
“There really was no other way to do it before just trial and error.
“But now we have the capability to design products for specific applications.
“What we are doing is a paradigm shift away from trial and error approach to a more scientific and pragmatic approach where we can engineer structures for individual purposes.”
He said while commercial applications of this type of work were slowly being implemented in bulk commodities like paints, the greatest impact would be in the biotechnology area.
And while similar research is being undertaken overseas, Dr Monteiro’s work is focusing on a new technique of creating these polymers in water, where once they could only be created in solvents.
“Apart from being environmentally friendly, the unique structural and physical properties mean they can become delivery devices in the body for either drugs or genes,” he said.
He is collaborating with Professor Istvan Toth, from the School of Pharmacy, who is looking at novel ways of drug delivery and purpose built polymeric nano-particles would be an invaluable addition.
Dr Monteiro received his doctorate, looking at organic free radical reaction in polymer systems, in 1995 following a Bachelor of Science at Griffith University.
He then spent 1 1/2 years in Canada at the University of Waterloo where he worked with Professor Ken O’Driscoll, regarded as the father of free radical polymer chemistry.
From there he went to The Technische Universiteit Eindhoven in the Netherlands as a post doctoral research fellow before returning to Australia as a senior research associate at the University of Sydney.
Two years later he went back to Eindhoven as a senior lecturer for a further three years before entering private industry with biotechnology company Gradipore.
This year he was awarded the prestigious Australian Research Council QEII Fellowship and subsequently received the J G Russell Award from the Australian Academy of Sciences.
He said the main attraction of UQ was the unique set-up that had been created in the field of biotechnology.
“All this cross fertilisation between disciplines and researchers is incredible,” he said.
“I haven’t seen it anywhere else in the world – it’s just so exciting to be part of it.”
He said while the work is a complicated and involving process now, taking up to two years to develop a purpose-built polymer, his aim was to get the technology to the stage where it can be produced in commercial quantities in a much shorter time-frame.
“We are at the infancy of this technology but the possibilities of having a synthetic structure with unlimited functionality are amazing,” he said.
Media: For more information contact Dr Michael Monteiro (telephone 07 3365 3838) or Andrew Dunne at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 2802).
