With more than 15,000 members from 90 countries, the Materials Research Society (MRS) is the world’s largest organization for materials researchers.
Each year, the Spring Meeting & Exhibit gathers this global community of scientists representing academia, industry, government and national laboratories for cross-disciplinary collaboration and scientific exchange.
UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering faculty members – including Assoc. Prof. Sihong Wang, who will receive the 2026 Outstanding Early Career Investigator Award – will be on hand as this collection of thought leaders gathers next week in Honolulu, Hawai’i.
UChicago PME presentation highlights (alphabetical by last name)
Integrated Quantum Technologies with Diamond Membranes
Alex High, Associate Professor of Molecular Engineering
Diamond is the leading solid-state platform for quantum networking and room-temperature deployable quantum sensing technologies. The continued evolution of quantum technologies in diamond requires heterogenous material platforms for sophisticated functionalities, device integration and packaging, and improved qubit performance. At UChicago and Argonne National Laboratory, we are creating pristine single-crystal diamond membranes that host coherent color center qubits and utilizing wafer-bonding processes to integrate them with a wide range of materials including fused silica, sapphire, thermal oxide, lithium niobate, tantalum, silicon and YIG. High-resolution imaging of a diamond membrane/sapphire interface showcases crystalline reconstruction, signifying bonding between the diamond and host substrate, and hosted color centers maintain excellent coherence throughout processing.
The bonded diamond membrane uniformity and robustness to fabrication enables sophisticated, device fabrication. We demonstrate several varieties of integrated nanophotonic cavities – critical elements in quantum photonics - with record quality factors. The membranes are also adept for generating 2D photonic structures, including cavities and slow-light waveguides. Furthermore, we show that our ultra-thin diamond membranes are compatible with quantum biosensing and advanced imaging methods such as total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy, which enables interfacing coherent diamond quantum sensors with living cells while rejecting unwanted background luminescence. Remarkably, we demonstrate that membrane integration can improve the spin coherence and microwave addressability of tin vacancy qubits while maintaining exceptional optical coherence, allowing us to create an operational spin-photon interface at 4 Kelvin. In total, the combination of qubit performance, high-performance device fabrication, and flexible materials integration is enabling a broad range of quantum photonic, acoustic, and sensing science and technologies.
Multispectral and Multifunctional Photo-Thermoregulation Based on Reversible Metal Electrodeposition
Po-Chun Hsu, Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering
Reversible metal electrodeposition (RME) can switch between plasmonic and dielectric behavior with a substantial change in refractive index, which implies a small required volume of active materials and switching energy. While conventional thin-film RME has shown great promise as color-neutral, high-efficiency smart windows, it holds even greater potential as a versatile tuning knob for accomplishing exotic functionalities when combined with nanophotonics designs and molecular engineering. Continuous control can also be achieved with step-wise electrodeposition, governed by the proper effective medium theory. In this talk, I will demonstrate these new concepts by introducing our recent RME-based active photo-thermoregulating device: (i) adaptive solar heater and sub-ambient radiative cooler, (ii) spectrally selective thermal emitter, and (iii) solar-NIR-MIR tri-band independently controlled smart window, which can shift the paradigms in applications such as building envelopes, HVAC, spacecraft thermal engineering, and radiative cooling.
Understanding the Liquid-Solid Interface for Electrochemical (co-)Intercalation
Chong Liu, Associate Professor of Molecular Engineering
Electrochemical intercalation underpins modern energy storage technologies and has recently emerged as a promising platform for lithium extraction. The phase transformation behaviors associated with Li, Na, or Li–Na co-intercalation are intricately coupled to the composition of the electrical double layer, which governs both separation selectivity and intercalation reversibility. In this talk, I will use model insertion materials to elucidate the complex interactions between Li and Na within a shared host lattice and highlight their dependence on the presence of spectator ions. Owing to their distinct ionic sizes, Li and Na undergo phase separation, and this phenomenon can be understood through analysis of thermodynamic and kinetic energies, and can be effectively tuned by introducing spectator ions.
Hydrogel Bioelectronics for High-Fidelity and Stable In Vivo Biointerfaces
Sihong Wang, Associate Professor of Molecular Engineering
The use of bioelectronic devices for acquiring biological information and delivering therapeutic interventions relies on direct contact with soft bio-tissues. To ensure high-quality signal transductions, the interfaces between bioelectronic devices and bio-tissues must have the highest contact area and long-term stability. For such biointerfaces, hydrogels are the ideal class of materials that best mimic the properties of extracellular matrix (ECM) with tissue-level moduli, excellent biocompatibility, and efficient mass transport. My group has been working on creating hydrogel designs for semiconductors, conductors, and further electronic devices to several properties, including bioadhesive to tissue surfaces and immune-compatible for suppressed foreign-body responses. In this talk, I will first introduce our material and device designs for introducing tissue-adhesive properties onto transistor-based biosensors. Then, to combat FBR, I will introduce a set of molecular design strategies for greatly enhancing the immune compatibility of polymer semiconductors and conductors (e.g., PEDOT:PSS). These include the design strategies for addressing the chemical aspects of immune reactions, and the mechanical aspects for achieving tissue-level moduli. In the end, I will also introduce the strategies for realizing hydrogel-based in bioelectrical and biochemical sensing devices.
Intrinsically Stretchable OLED with High-Efficiency Electroluminescence
Sihong Wang, Associate Professor of Molecular Engineering
The vast amount of biological mysteries and biomedical challenges faced by humans provide a prominent drive for seamlessly merging electronics with biological living systems (e.g. human bodies) to achieve long-term stable functions. Towards this trend, one of the key requirements for electronics is to possess biomimetic form factors in various aspects for achieving long-term biocompatibility. For light-emitting devices such as OLED, biomimetic stretchability is highly needed for the use as conformable wearable displays and implanted light sources for biostimulation. In this talk, I will introduce our research in realizing stretchable properties onto OLED, based on a “first-principle” approach for the materials and device designs to realize high electroluminescence efficiency. Building upon the “third-generation” electroluminescent mechanism, thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF), we realized 1) the polymer emitter design that incorporates high stretchability without influencing the TADF processes, 2) emitting layer (EML) engineering that suppresses concentration quench, and 3) efficient electron injection and transport into the emitting layer. These designs address all the major electronic and photophysical steps in electroluminescence in OLED, and thereby give us a high efficiency at the fully stretchable device level. Our developments of fully stretchable OLED devices show the promise of achieving all the desired EL and mechanical characteristics, including high efficiency, brightness, switching speed, stretchability, and low driving voltage.
Engineering Electronic Polymers Using Self-Driving Laboratory (Polybot)
Jie Xu, Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering
The development of electronic polymers has lagged behind the rapidly growing demand for advanced materials in flexible devices, large-scale printable electronics, and sustainable energy applications. This slow progress stems from the vast design space and complex processing conditions required, making precise design a formidable challenge. Balancing critical properties—like electronic mobility, strength, ionic conductivity, sustainability, and processability—further complicates the development pipeline. To address these challenges, we are pioneering new approaches to accelerate the electronic polymer development pipeline. While AI-driven materials research has seen rapid advances, applying these technologies to electronic polymer design remains challenging, particularly due to the limited data availability stemming from the lengthy design-make-test-analyze cycle in electronics. Our work focuses on accelerating the design of functional polymers by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and automated robotic experimentation. This talk will highlight research conducted in our self-driving lab, Polybot, covering topics from the inverse discovery of electrochromic polymer structures, the controlled assembly of conducting polymers through solution processing, and the discovery of design principles for mixed-conducting polymers in electrochemical transistors. We will also discuss ongoing efforts to evolve Polybot into a more adaptive system with enhanced human-machine interfaces and as a community resource by building a specialized electronic polymer database.
