Photos of Guo and some of his inventions
L. Jay Guo, the Emmett Leith Collegiate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has been elected to the National Academy of Inventors for playing a crucial role in enabling the next generation of flexible electronics and technologies that harness light.
He has made multitude contributions to technology development. One is a scalable way of making small structures by nanopatterning. Rather than using conventional lithography, which burns away parts of polymer coating on chips using light, his group focused on a method that resembles printing, with flexible base materials wound onto rolls. Known as roll-to-roll nanoimprint technology, it made nanopatterning easier to scale up for factory manufacturing.
From this technological base, he and his industrial partners have used nanopatterning to create flexible displays, touchscreens and lighting as well as structural color, which uses the optical phenomena that produce color in butterfly wings rather than conventional pigments. His work has attracted the interest from companies such as Samsung and Toyota, and he has also co-founded two startup companies using simpler thin film manufacturing technologies, both launched in 2018.
"Dr. Guo is an outstanding scholar and inventor in the field of nanotechnology and manufacturing. He made extraordinary technical contributions through innovation and invention, which have made significant economic and societal impacts in the past twenty-five years," Zhenqiang Ma, the Lynn H. Matthias Professor in Engineering and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor at the University of Wisconsin, wrote in his nomination letter.
One of Guo's startups, Zenith Nano, offers a range of products including flexible, transparent conductors for touch screens, electrochromic windows that change their transparency on demand, and flexible solar cells. The other, InLight technologies, is led by his former PhD student. It offers structural color for automobile coatings, cosmetic products and colored solar panels.
Now, Guo is developing an approach that can mimic chrome coatings, potentially achieving a popular look without the need to process a toxic form of the metal chromium. His research group is also using AI to help design these advanced optical coatings.
"I have long had a conviction that the ultimate success of engineering research is to deploy in the real world," Guo said. "It is an honor to have these efforts recognized by the National Academy of Inventors."
Guo is also a professor of applied physics, mechanical engineering, and currently serves as the director of macromolecular science and engineering.