Neuro X seminar: Soft, Permeable Electronics: Materials, Devices, and Energy

Abstract
Soft electronics plays an important role in the realization of health monitoring and rehabilitation, Internet of Things (IoTs), and soft robotics. In the past two decades, the research focuses have been devoted to developing soft electronics based on thin film materials and architectures that are non-permeable to air, moisture, and liquid. It is recently found that permeability is essential to the chronic biocompatibility of these soft devices, especially those closely attached on soft skins and tissues. This talk will discuss our research effort on developing soft and permeable electronics for wearable, skin-attached, and implantable applications. We will discuss the development of fibrous conductive materials, and their applications as building blocks for fabricating highly flexible, foldable, stretchable, and permeable electronic devices and systems. We will also discuss how high-performance flexible and wearable energy harvesting and storage devices are fabricated with these fibrous conductive materials.

Biography:
Prof. Zijian Zheng is currently Chair Professor of Soft Materials and Devices at the Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology, Associate Director of Research Institute for Intelligent Wearable Systems, Lead Investigator of Research Institute for Smart Energy at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). His research interests include surface and polymer science, nanofabrication, flexible and wearable electronics, energy conversion and storage. Prof. Zheng received his B. Eng. in Chemical Engineering at Tsinghua University in 2003, PhD in Chemistry at University of Cambridge in 2007, and postdoctoral training at Northwestern University in 2008-2009. He joined PolyU as Assistant Professor in 2009, and was promoted to tenured Associate Professor in 2013 and then Professor in 2017. He has published more than 200 papers in journals such as Science, Nat. Mater., Nat. Comm., Adv. Mate., JACS, Angew. Chem.. He also files more than 40 patents and is recipient of more than 15 academic awards. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of EcoMat (impact factor: 12.213), a flagship open-access journal in green energy and environment published by Wiley. He is Founding Member of The Young Academy of Sciences of Hong Kong (2018), Chang Jiang Chair Professor by the Ministry of Education of China (2020), Senior Research Fellow of the University Grant Commission of Hong Kong (2021), Fellow of International Association of Advanced Materials (FIAAM, 2021), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC, 2022).