SNU Professor Sun Jeong-Yun Nominated as “This Month’s Scientist” by the Ministry of Science and ICT


▲ SNU Department of Materials Science and Engineering Professor Sun Jeong-Yun

 
SNU College of Engineering (Dean Cha Kook-Heon) announces that Professor Sun Jeong-Yun of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering has been nominated as April’s winner of “This Month’s Scientist” hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and sponsored by the National Research Foundation of Korea.
 
Professor Sun has finished his bachelor, master, and doctor’s at SNU Department of Materials Science and Engineering and has also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He has returned to SNU as a professor in 2014.
 
Sun receives this award for developing a technology that can construct large, transparent and elastic touch panels using jelly-like hydrogel.
 
Conventional touch panels, made out of rigid and brittle materials, are difficult to be employed in flexible and wearable devices. The flexible and transparent electrodes made from carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires are a heated research topic. However, these, too, bear limitations in elasticity, transmittancy, and conductivity.
 
Hence, Sun’s team creates a new touch panel technology producing transparent and elastic electrodes from ionic hydrogel that are attachable to moving surfaces like human skin. His team overcomes the limitations of unwanted electrochemical reactions at interface and delayed signals by replacing electrons with ions as election carriers. Thus, they succeed in creating this new panel of matching signal transmittance as existing panels.
 
Approximately 5-10 years later, this transparent and elastic touch panel (or screen) can be implemented to phone, TV, and game devices worn on arm or hand. The new technology can come convenient if wearable phone and computer using subminiature semiconductor circuits and batteries are to be developed 10-20 years later.

Professor Sun states, “The core of IoT is the interface technology that delivers human’s intention to machine. Our development has provided the buttresses to researches aiming to create ionic devices that foster human-machine interaction.” He aspires, “Our aim is to construct the perfect interface technology that allows the interaction between ionic system and human nerves in preparation for the coming IoT era.”
 
In addition, Sun advices students with dreams to become scientists to trust themselves to take courage and step forth for their dreams. He adds, “It is important to constantly ask oneself about what one really wants to do in the future. A sincere and devoted attitude is important to living one’s dream.”
 

▲ New Touch Panel Technology that Uses Hydrogel