A notable success for UTS has been the scientific and technological unravelling by Prof. Geoff Smith of the mechanism by which powdered lanthanum hexaboride (LaB6) can act as a infra-red blocking ingredient in solar film for windows. Work in this area has led to industrial research contracts with Solutia and BASF in the USA and Germany respectively. Solutia now offers a LaB6-based solar glazing laminate based on the ideas and technologies developed at UTS. A paper on this subject by Dr Stefan Schelm and Prof. Geoff Smith attracted wide interest in the nano-materials media in 2003. This aspect of the topic forms part of a wider initiative to develop ways to calculate and predict the optical absorption, reflection/emission spectra of nanoscale structures. Another success story from the same team has been the accurate modelling of interesting new materials, such as a composite gold-organic coating developed by CSIRO.
 A paper by Schelm and Smith in Applied Physics Letters attracted widespread attention in the scientific media and was picked up by Nature News amongst others |
