1.Bioelectronics

The seamless integration of microsystems technology with living organisms inpsires promising routes to the creation of powerful tools in biomedical research and exciting possibilities in clinical medicine. By thinking beyond traditional inception of electronics and photonics, we are exploring novel approaches to address unmet clinical needs. Those efforts are towards: i) designing biosensing systems, with advanced wearability or implantability, that can offer diagnostic insights in a timely and precise fashion. ii) designing intelligent systems that can ensure clinically safe and dynamically precise delivery of molecular and cellular tools to the targeted tissues and cell types.

Example: Utilizing digital chips with controlled drug carriers can enable AI-automated drug delivery for precision medicine.
Example: Symmetry engineering in 2D materials (e.g. MXene) provides an additional degree of control in transistor designs, enhances piezoelectric augmentation in pressure sensing, and enables high-fidelity ECG sensing for AI-assisted early detection.
Example: Soft photonic systems constructed from monocrystalline silicon, for precise delivery of light to targeted biological tissues, at dimensions that can approach those of a single cell, with the ability to undergo controlled bioresorption into benign products after a well‐defined operational time, thereby serving as building blocks for silicon‐based bioresorbable photonic systems, with potential broad applicability in diagnosis and therapy.
Example: Bioelectronics with system-level integration in order to enable feedback loops that engage artificial intelligence and real-time coupling between diagnostics and therapeutics

2. Neural Interface

Profound unknowns about neural network and brain development embed enormous opportunities in developing technologies that treat brain disorders and enhance brain potential. However, to develop tools that can unveil those unknowns, the challenges reside mostly on the strong materials mismatch at the neural interface. This research theme focuses on fundamental study of charge and photon transports at the biotic-abiotic interface and developing devices that can advance neurotechnology.

As an example shown here, transient probes that could provide a dynamic and compatible interface with living tissue and evolving environment, and then safely dissolve as part of metabolic cycle, after completing their diagnostic or therapeutic duties.

3. 3D multiscale electronic platform

Making integrated microsystems three-dimensional not only releases an additional degree of spatial freedom in fabrication to increase a device’s performance but also allows a more-intimate interface with biological systems, soft robotics, and other spatially irregular systems. However, although traditional fabrication techniques realize design and assembly in three dimensions, the 3D dynamic/bioinspired transformation of flexible micro-/nanosystems at multiscale still remains challenging. This research theme aims to develop organic–inorganic and/or biotic–abiotic 3D hybrid micro-/nanosystems, with potential applications in biomedical devices and soft robotics.

As examples shown here, folding electronics at microscale enables unconventional designs of sensors and robots. Folding silicon at microscale creates deep insights into its structure-property-function relationships.
As examples shown here, 3D micro-/nanosystems with organic-inorganic integration at multiscale for realizing collective functionalities needed in addressing real-word challenges.