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KAIST to Host the ‘6th Emerging Materials Symposium’
KAIST (President Kwang Hyung Lee) announced on the 22nd of August that it will host the 6th KAIST Emerging Materials Symposium on the 26th in the Meta Convergence Hall (W13) on its main Daejeon campus, to explore the latest research trends in next-generation promising nanomaterials and discuss future visions.
Launched in 2020, this symposium marks its sixth year and has established itself as KAIST’s flagship academic event by inviting world-renowned scholars on next-generation materials to share groundbreaking achievements.
The event will feature six speakers from four prestigious overseas universities—the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Yale University, UCLA, and Drexel University—providing an overview of cutting-edge global research trends in emerging materials, while also showcasing KAIST’s representative achievements.
Notably, Professor Yury Gogotsi of Drexel University, who gained global recognition for the pioneering development of MXene—an emerging material attracting attention for its high electrical conductivity and electromagnetic shielding capability—will deliver a lecture titled “The Future of MXene.”
In the session “Global Frontier in MIT,” three MIT professors will present the institute’s leading research: ▴Professor Ju Li, an authority on AI-robotics-based materials synthesis, ▴Professor Martin Z. Bazant, an expert in the fields of electrochemistry and electronic transport dynamics, and ▴Professor Jeehwan Kim, a leading researcher tackling the limitations of silicon wafer-based semiconductor manufacturing.
In the session “Emerging Materials and New Possibilities,” ▴Professor Yury Gogotsi of Drexel University, ▴Professor Liangbing Hu of Yale University, a pioneer in nanoparticle synthesis through rapid high-temperature thermal processing, and ▴Professor Jun Chen of UCLA, a key researcher in bioelectronic materials using multifunctional flexible materials, will present the development of core emerging materials and future directions.
Additionally, six professors from KAIST’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering will lead the session “KAIST’s MSE Entrepreneurial Spirit” where they will share the process of founding startups based on KAIST’s advanced materials technologies and how nanomaterials have taken root as foundational industries.
The session will include: ▴Professor Il-Doo Kim, founder of the nanofiber and colorimetric gas sensor company IDKLAB; ▴Professor Kibeom Kang, CEO of TDS Innovation, a company specializing in precursors and equipment for 2D material synthesis; ▴Professor Yeonsik Jeong, co-founder of Pico Foundry, a company producing SERS chips; ▴Professor Sang Wook Kim, founder of Materials Creation, which develops products based on high-quality graphene oxide; ▴Professor Jaebeom Jang, founder of Flashomic Inc., a leader in the commercialization of high-speed multiplexed protein imaging technology; and ▴Professor Steve Park, co-CEO of Aldaver, a company developing artificial cadavers (practice organs) that fully replicate the human body. They will each share their entrepreneurial cases, offering vivid lectures on the journey of scientific technologies into the marketplace.
The symposium will also feature a tour of the automated research lab at the Top-Tier KAIST-MIT Future Energy Initiative Research Center, jointly established by KAIST and MIT. The center, designed to build an AI-robotics-based autonomous research laboratory for the rapid development and application of advanced energy materials to help solve the global climate crisis, will operate for ten years. Overseas scholars will also be given an inside look at research and development using automated infrastructure, with discussions to follow on upcoming international collaborations.
Professor Il-Doo Kim of KAIST’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, who organized the event, emphasized, “This symposium, featuring six global scholars and six KAIST entrepreneurial professors, will be a valuable opportunity to instill an international perspective and entrepreneurial mindset in students. It will also mark a turning point in KAIST’s innovative materials research and international collaborative research network.”
As part of the program, on Wednesday the 27th, KAIST will hold academic exchange sessions with overseas scholars. These will include discussions on international joint research, as well as sessions where KAIST students and early-career researchers can present their work and interact, opening opportunities for future collaborations.
The 6th KAIST Emerging Materials Symposium is open free of charge to all researchers interested in the latest research trends in chemistry, physics, biology, and materials science-related engineering fields.
Participation on the 26th will be available through on-site registration without prior application. Further details are available on the KAIST Department of Materials Science and Engineering EMS website (https://mse.kaist.ac.kr/index.php?mid=MSE_EMS).
2025.08.22 View 3858 -
A KAIST research team develops a washable, transparent, and flexible OLED with MXene nanotechnology
Transparent and flexible displays, which have received a lot of attention in various fields including automobile displays, bio-healthcare, military, and fashion, are in fact known to break easily when experiencing small deformations. To solve this problem, active research is being conducted on many transparent and flexible conductive materials such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, silver nanowires, and conductive polymers.
On June 13, a joint research team led by Professor Kyung Cheol Choi from the KAIST School of Electrical Engineering and Dr. Yonghee Lee from the National Nano Fab Center (NNFC) announced the successful development of a water-resistant, transparent, and flexible OLED using MXene nanotechnology. The material can emit and transmit light even when exposed to water.
MXene is a 2D material with high electrical conductivity and optical transmittance, and it can be produced on a large scale through solution processes. However, despite these attractive properties, MXene’s applications were limited as a long-term electrical device due to its electrical properties being degraded easily by atmospheric moisture and water. The material was therefore unable to be systemized into the form of a matrix that can display information.
Professor Choi’s research team used an encapsulation tactic that can protect materials from oxidation caused by moisture and oxygen to develop a MXene-based OLED with a long lifespan and high stability against external environmental factors. The research team first focused on analyzing the degradation mechanism of MXene’s electrical conductivity, and then concentrated on designing an encapsulation membrane. The team blocked moisture and provided flexibility through residual stress offset, ultimately producing a double-layered encapsulation membrane. In addition, a thin plastic film with a thickness of a few micrometers was attached to the top layer to allow washing in water without degradation.
< Figure 1. (a) Transparent passive-matrix display made of MXene-based OLED, (b) Cross-sectional image of MXene-based OLED observed by transmission electron microscope (TEM), (c) Electro-optical characteristic graph of red, green, and blue MXene-based OLED >
Through this study, the research team developed a MXene-based red(R)/green(G)/blue(B) OLED that emits a brightness of over 1,000 cd/m2 that is detectable by the naked eye even under sunlight, thereby meeting the conditions for outdoor displays. As for the red MXene-based OLED, the researchers confirmed a standby storage life of 2,000 hours (under 70% luminescence), a standby operation life of 1,500 hours (under 60% luminescence), and a flexibility withstanding 1,000 cycles under a low curvature of under 1.5mm. In addition, they showed that its performance was maintained even after six hours of immersion under water (under 80% luminescence). Furthermore, a patterning technique was used to produce the MXene-based OLED in the form of a passive matrix, and the team demonstrated its use as a transparent display by displaying letters and shapes.
Ph.D. candidate So Yeong Jeong, who led this study, said, “To improve the reliability of MXene OLED, we focused on producing an adequate encapsulation structure and a suitable process design.” She added, “By producing a matrix-type MXene OLED and displaying simple letters and shapes, we have laid the foundations for MXene’s application in the field of transparent displays.”
< Image 1. Cover of ACS Nano Front Cover (Conceptual diagram of MXene-based OLED display) >
Professor Choi said, “This research will become the guideline for applying MXene in electrical devices, but we expect for it to also be applied in other fields that require flexible and transparent displays like automobiles, fashion, and functional clothing. And to widen the gap with China’s OLED technology, these new OLED convergence technologies must continue to be developed.”
This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea and funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT, Korea. It was published as a front cover story of ACS Nano under the title, “Highly Air-Stable, Flexible, and Water-Resistive 2D Titanium Carbide MXene-Based RGB Organic Light-Emitting Diode Displays for Transparent Free-Form Electronics” on June 13.
2023.07.10 View 12813