Dunedin's biggest conference on advanced materials and nanotechnology could point the way to further lucrative smart industries for the city.
More than 300 researchers, many from about 10 overseas countries, attended the fourth major conference, titled AMN4 and organised by the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, which ended in Dunedin on Thursday.
The Wellington-based institute includes collaborating scientists at the University of Otago, with Prof Keith Gordon and Prof Sally Brooker, both of the Otago chemistry department, co-chairing the latest five-day conference.
About half the participants came from abroad, and the event had been a "big success", also raising international awareness of Dunedin and New Zealand science, Prof Gordon said.
About 100 research students, including some from Otago, had met a host of other researchers in this multidisciplinary field.
The participation of English-born Nobel Laureate Prof Sir Harry Kroto had been "inspirational, just fantastic", Prof Gordon said.
Prof Kroto was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996, with two fellow scientists, for his role in discovering the Carbon-60 molecule in 1985.
Prof Gordon was also encouraged by National MP Dr Paul Hutchison's comments in opening the conference.
Dr Hutchison said New Zealand had for decades underinvested in science research and development and should be "far more ambitious for science" in future.
Prof Gordon said that several key areas of research highlighted at the conference, including in supramolecular chemistry, which was being explored by Prof Brooker, could lead to positive economic opportunities.
There was "fantastic potential" to benefit from the development and, ultimately, the relatively small-scale manufacture of a "smorgasbord" of clever new high value materials, including some contributing to a new generation of cheaper solar cells, he said.
Nanotechnology is a branch of science dealing with the design and manufacture of extremely small electrical circuits and other devices built at the molecular scale.
