In this era of challenges and opportunities, innovation in global technology is propelling human society forward at an unprecedented rate. This rapid advancement pushes young scholars into the spotlight and requires them to take on greater responsibilities since scientific innovation is not a technology competition but offers real solutions to social problems and shapes mankind’s future.

The launch ceremony for the 2023 MIT Technology Review’s “35 Innovators Under 35 Asia-Pacific" (“TR35”) and Youth Technology Forum was held in Hangzhou’s Future Sci-Tech City on November 2. Prof. Bowen Zhu, a researcher at Westlake University School of Engineering, was selected for his contribution to the development of flexible electronic materials by developing active-matrix tactile sensor arrays based on oxide semiconductors.

Electronic skin is an important application of flexible electronics in biomedicine. The skin is the largest organ of the human body. Its soft texture allows humans to sense pressure, pain, strain, temperature, and other stimuli to determine the nature of the surrounding environment and carry out daily activities. The excellent material properties and powerful sensing functions of human skin have inspired the development of skin-like electronics to emulate the performance and functions of real skin. This is of great significance for applications such as health monitoring, intelligent prosthetics, and bionic robots. Zhu focuses on developing flexible sensors that mimic the skin’s properties and functions. He has developed patternable, high-performance, intrinsically stretchable flexible electronic materials based on vertically aligned gold nanowire arrays. These materials solve the long-standing problem of weak bonding between conductive materials and substrates and provide excellent electrode materials for soft electronic devices. He has also successfully engineered active-matrix tactile sensor arrays and achieved integration of large-area, high-density tactile sensor arrays by integrating sensor pixels with thin-film transistors, solving the issues of low sensitivity, slow response times, and low spatial resolution suffered by conventional flexible tactile sensors. In addition, by integrating a tactile sensor with an artificial neuron device, he has constructed an artificial mechanoreceptor that encodes external pressure stimuli into electrical spikes, providing an effective way to develop neuromorphic tactile sensors and process complex tactile information – an important advance towards achieving an artificial sense of touch.

Bowen ZHU

Bowen Zhu received his BS degree in chemistry from Jilin University (China) in 2010. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in materials science in 2016 from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, under the supervision of Professor Xiaodong Chen. After his postdoctoral fellow training with Professor Yang Yang's group at UCLA, he joined Professor Wenlong Cheng's group at Monash University, Australia, in 2017 as a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) fellow funded by the Australian Research Council. He is now an independent Principal Investigator (PI) at the School of Engineering, Westlake University, China.