PIs

Professor, Director Electron Microscope Unit, University of New South Wales 🔗
Status: unreviewed revisit date: None Application status: none LOR status: not_needed
Department(s)/lab(s): School of Chemistry | Tilley Nanomaterials and Electron Microscopy Group @ UNSW
Summary:

Tilley directs the UNSW Electron Microscope Unit and runs a nanomaterials group whose distinctive capability is in-situ liquid-cell TEM: watching nanoparticle nucleation, growth and catalytic transformation in real time inside the microscope, in liquid, rather than inferring mechanism from before-and-after snapshots. The synthetic side produces magnetic and plasmonic nanoparticles used as biosensor labels and MRI contrast agents, largely in collaboration with Gooding and Reece. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the group is a supplier and characteriser of the nanoparticle probes that in-cell quantum sensing depends on — including the magnetic-nanoparticle labels whose stray fields a pT/sqrt(Hz) NV sensor would actually detect — and the liquid-cell TEM capability is a rare way to validate what those particles are doing in situ. Borderline inclusion (materials characterisation rather than sensing), kept for the collaborative infrastructure it represents.

Created at: July 12, 2026, 1:04 a.m. Updated at: July 12, 2026, 1:04 a.m. Metadata: Fresh 2026-07-11. Primary lab: nanomaterials group, School of Chemistry; also Director of the UNSW Electron Microscope Unit (a service facility, which constrains group bandwidth).