MHI-Scholar Chuan Wang
Chuan Wang received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2011 and was among the first generation of Ming Hsieh Institute Scholars, who are awarded for their research accomplishments and considered the top students in the department.
From 2011 to 2013, Wang worked as a postdoctoral scholar in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at University of California, Berkeley with a joint appointment in the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He recently joined Michigan State University as Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
On April 23, 2013, Wang visited USC and gave a talk about his current research and career developments at the Ph.D. Student Seminar Series. In his talk, he discussed the recent advancements in solution-based processing of high-purity semiconducting carbon nanotube networks, which has led to macro-scale fabrication of thin-film transistors (TFTs) with excellent yield, high performance, small device-to-device variation, and extreme bendability on mechanically flexible substrates.
These research results are now published in the journal Nature Materials, and reported by Nature, Science, Technology Review, Time, abc News, and many more. Chuan Wang is part of the lead-author of the research team that created the first user-interactive sensor network on flexible plastic.
Electronic skin (e-skin), a mechanically flexible sensor network built on top of a very thin plastic sheet (~ 25 micrometer) that can be used to spatially map the pressure stimuli and provide instantaneous response by emitting light through a monolithically integrated organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display to allow the visualization of the applied pressure. In this system, the OLEDs are turned on locally where the surface is touched and the intensity of the emitted light is determined by the magnitude of the pressure applied.
The e-skin can be easily laminated on any surface, curved or otherwise, to enable various forms of human-surface interactions. Potential applications include robot skin, interactive table top and in-vehicle dashboards, smart wallpaper. Medical applications such as e-skin bandages applied to a person’s arm that would continuously monitor blood pressure and pulse rates, for example, while providing real-time feedback, is also possible.
Research paper in Nature Materials (doi: 10.1038/nmat3711)
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Published on May 22nd, 2017
Last updated on April 6th, 2021