This past Tuesday, Prof. Yonggang Huang from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department came to Slivka to tell us about his recent discoveries that have gained nationwide attention and been cited in various channels of media, including ABC news.

Prof. Huang's research addresses the fundamental problem of modern-day electronics: the brittle nature of silicon greatly limits its use, particularly in applications in which flexibility of the semiconductor material is necessary (e.g., portable antennae for military purposes, light solar cells that could be worn with clothing, flexible electronic newspaper, new-generation cameras, etc).

The solution that Prof. Huang and his group had proposed was to change the geometry of the silicon wafers by sticking them to a stretched polymer and allowing the polymer to spring back to its unstretched state. As a result, the silicon wafers become wavy, instead of straight, and thus also become highly flexible, much like a straight steel wire when it's wound into a slinky.

This discovery has allowed Prof. Huang and his coworkers to construct an eye-shaped camera, in which the silicon detectors are attached to a spherical surface and not a traditionally flat one. Such a camera is regarded by some as an early prototype of a bionic eye!

Listening to the person whose work is sure to bring a technological leap in the near future was a great privilege, and the fireside in general was a success!