Four-dimensional manufacturing has created what some argue is the latest wave in industrialisation. Dr Carlo Montemagno, Director of Ingenuity Lab, explains how nanotechnology 2.0 can revolutionise healthcare, manufacturing, and looking after the environment.

The New Economy: Now give me a brief understanding of how the manufacturing process has been reformed through this technology?

Dr. Carlo Montemagno: It’s greatly expanded the opportunities for making new products that have a larger scale of production and a larger envelope of properties and opportunities to satisfy consumer needs and consumer wants.

The New Economy: So tell me about the intrinsic property of this material and how, sort of, it’s set apart from what’s on the market place today?

Dr. Carlo Montemagno: Well, currently we produce products, which have standardised bulk properties that we are used to. 4D manufacturing in my mind is really the next wave: it’s nanotechnology 2.0.

It’s the idea of how do we take really, really, small things and how do we incorporate them in a larger scale system or a network that allow us to get access to those properties but be able to use them into things that we build and engineer.

So what we are doing now is with 4D manufacturing, putting in, those little properties that you will all see measured, see people talk about and incorporate them into materials that are bulk, that are large, and using them to manufacture the properties we can use every day.

The New Economy: Now, how do you take that whole process that you have just described and move it from a 3D space to a four-dimensional one?

Dr. Carlo Montemagno: What we do is we do some sophisticated chemistry and with this chemistry we incorporate molecules or pieces of matter that have an inherent function. And we put that inside these molecules, so now when you make something, you can make a material that has distributive properties that adds new functions.

So instead of it just been colour or tensile strength or flexibility. You start adding things; it is like being able to purify water to transduce energy, to select for different materials to change its physical properties, and also to change the way it interacts with nature and its surrounding environments.

The New Economy: Okay, let’s look at some specific examples, right. The medical field, I am sure abounds with opportunities. How can you incorporate these innovations into the process of, you know, dealing with various forms of trauma? 

Dr. Carlo Montemagno: When you want to replace a piece of a body part – the meniscus is probably a good example – it is very complex, it’s not a homogenous structure. Everybody knows your body isn’t all one type of tissue, it is very, very segmented and it has different functions at different locations, all with different properties.

Historically the way we’ve tried to tissue engineer these new materials, was we put a uniform scaffolding in. We made have doped it with molecules to encourage cell growth or differentiation. But you can’t get the heterogeneous structure normally that you need. It is one of the big issues associated with this.

With 4D manufacturing, I can put in molecules, which trigger different pieces of the structure, so that when it is interfaced with the body you ultimately end up with a material that has the same basic properties that you started with.

So you can have a material that on the periphery – like a knee meniscus – is highly vascularised, just like it is on the knee, but it is stronger and more flexible towards the centre. And you can also make it so that the structure all dissolves at the same timeframe that the cells are regenerating.

So the end result is you make a material; the material talks to the cells; the stem cells; tell them, what kind of cells are you going to produce? – What kind of structure you are going to produce?  And as they are being produced, the other parts melt away.  So the end result is, you end up having a natural meniscus.

The New Economy: How disruptive has this technology been to the production process?

Dr. Carlo Montemagno: Going beyond the medical complex and the medical infrastructure. You have the ability now to do just in time, specialised manufacturing. You have the ability to engage in the transmission of the intellectual property and then based upon the requirements of the customer, and based upon the material that you have available; you can customise and make the part on site that you want.

So if you think about it, it’s like having a world of a 100,000 Kinko’s in which the Kinko’s instead of doing photocopies, it produces the part that you need locally.

The New Economy: Your research lab is also known for transforming CO2 into products. Tell me how is it being used to address global warming?

Dr. Carlo Montemagno: It uses some of the ideas of 4D manufacturing, the idea of making distributed materials and in incorporating life processes into things that we build. So what are we doing now is we have been able to harness an element of a photosynthetic process into a solid-state system; into a reactive system; that is extraordinarily efficient.

So what we do with that is that we take a waste product CO2 and we convert that waste product into value-added products. We have identified about 70 different drop-in chemicals.

Our system right now, because of its efficiency. The primary slowest reactor, if you have a one-litre volume of the slowest reactant, it can transform 266 metric tonnes of CO2 a year into value-added products. So instead of polluting the environment, you are making money on the CO2 that is being emitted.

The New Economy: So what is the return on investment?

Dr. Carlo Montemagno: The way the numbers look right now is two years, two and a half years, for the capital and to get a return on the investment. It’s really shocking and scary what kind of transformation it can have on the environment.

It means that businesses all are going to be able to diversify; remain true to the core business but be able to produce products from there waste streams, which they’re being criticised, or even taxed for, and be able to make revenue from those emissions.

The New Economy: So really if you are going to get anyone up in arms and really changing their production process – it’s appealing to their pocket book.

Dr. Carlo Montemagno: Absolutely, and I think it is really the goal forward for dealing with some of the global warming issues that we are all concerned about. The idea of CO2 emissions being regulatorily controlled the driver of getting people to reduce CO2. It’s a long up-hill battle.

I think you can greatly accelerate it, if you cannot only reduce your CO2 emissions but also make additional money by doing it. And I think that is really where the driver is, that is how it increases prosperity for everyone.

You do not have to engage into some of the discussions that people have about, having to do more with less. Instead you can say, we can be less impactful and be more prosperous.

The New Economy: Dr. Montemagno, thank you so much for joining me today

Dr. Carlo Montemagno: Oh, thank you.