The Nano-Molecular Analysis for Emerging Technologies (NMAET) V conference was an outstanding success, attracting 60 delegates to the National Physical Laboratory on 14-15 November 2012.

The meeting covered both the frontier science and applications in novel systems as well as recent advances in analytical techniques to characterise them, including XPS, SIMS, AFM, SPM, near-field optical methods, optical trapping, ambient mass spectrometry and MALDI and engaged analysts from both industry and academia.

There were 11 excellent invited talks from world-leading experts over the two days, as well as nine contributed talks. These covered a wide spectrum of industrial applications, but all with a focus on cutting-edge surface and nano characterisation and measurement. The meeting brought together world-leading scientists from both academia and industry, including Unilever, Smith & Nephew, Shell and GSK.

On the second afternoon, a special Surface Interactions session was held as part of a TSB project. This industry-focused half day session discussed recent progress on science and technology of interactions at the nanoscale covering the interactions of particulates, biological substances and surface modifying chemicals with real and model surfaces.

The event provided a friendly atmosphere for collaboration, and enabled a lively and engaging discussion on many issues.

We are very grateful for support from the National Measurement Office Chemical and Biological programme and the Nanotechnology Industries Association and the Nanotechnology KTN for their sponsorship.

Quotes from delegates:

"An excellent conference."

"The organisation was first class."

"I enjoyed the meeting very much - very good range of topics and speakers, sufficiently broad to maintain interest but also focused enough on nanomaterials and techniques that almost everything had some relevance to my work here."