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Mike Cortie was born and educated in South Africa. He has a BSc(Eng) degree in Physical Metallurgy, a Masters degree earned from research on the corrosion of zirconium and a PhD degree, which was focused on metal fatigue and awarded in 1987. After a stint at South Africa's Atomic Energy Corporation and at Pylon Engineering, a gear-cutting works, Mike joined Mintek, a minerals and metals research organisation. Mike headed the Physical Metallurgy Division of Mintek between 1997 and 2002. The Division consults widely to South African and international industry and now generates the major portion of its funds from foreign contract research. He relocated to Australia and joined UTS in July 2002.
Mike's current research interest is nanotechnology, and in particular the applications of precious metals in nanotechnology. Previous research activities included research on ferritic and nickel-substituted stainless steels, on intermetallic compounds with the C1 (CF12) and B2/L21 crystal structures, on X-ray diffraction and crystallographic texture of bcc and fcc alloys, on cellular automata and the simulation of metal solidification, cracking and solid state transformations, on explosive interactions between molten metal and water, on displacive transformations in Pt-containing alloys and compounds, on the phase relationships in the Al-Au-Cu ternary system, and on the crystal structures of the martensite phase formed by displacive phase transformation in the b Au-Al-Cu shape memory alloy. He has also been active outside of the materials arena, and has made contributions to the mathematical modelling and graphics rendering of mollusc shells, and the science education of children.
Selected Publications
D. Pissuwan, S.M. Valenzuela, and M.B. Cortie, Therapeutic possibilities of plasmonically heated gold nanoparticles, Trends in Biotechnology, vol.24(2), 2006, pp.62-67.
M.B. Cortie and E. Van der Lingen, Catalytic gold nano-particles, Materials Forum, vol.26, 2002, pp.1-14.
M.B. Cortie, J. Kerr, S. Nana and D.S. Knight, Experimental processing of FeCr sigma-phase powders, Materials Forum, vol. 29, J.F. Nie and M. Barnett (eds.), 2005, pp.262-267.
M.B. Cortie, The weird world of nanoscale gold, Gold Bulletin, vol. 37, 2004, pp.12-19.
K.E. Peceros, X. Xu, S.R. Bulcock and M.B. Cortie, Dipole-dipole plasmon interactions in gold-on-polystyrene composites, J. Physical Chemistry B, vol.109, 2005, pp.21516-21520 (cover story).
M.B. Cortie, M.H. Zareie, S.R. Ekanayake, and M.J. Ford, Conduction, storage and leakage in particle-on-SAM nano-capacitors, IEEE Trans. on Nanotechnology, vol.4(4), 2005, pp.406-414.
M.B. Cortie, A.I. Maaroof and G.B. Smith, Electrochemical capacitance of mesoporous gold, Gold Bulletin, vol.38(1), 2005, pp.15-23.
X. Xu, M. Stevens and M.B. Cortie, In situ precipitation of gold nanoparticles onto glass for potential architectural applications, Chemistry of Materials, vol. 16(1), 2004, pp.2259-2266.