Mingchao ZHANG

Dr. Mingchao ZHANG joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the National University of Singapore as an Assistant Professor in December 2024. Prior to this, he received a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany. His research there focused on small-scale intelligent polymer materials and nano/microstructures. In July 2021, Dr. Zhang earned his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the Department of Chemistry at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, where his research centered on the synthesis, characterization, and additive manufacturing of smart carbon nanomaterials. He completed his bachelor’s degree in Materials Chemistry from China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China, in 2016. Dr. Zhang has authored more than 50 publications, including Nature Materials, Nature Communications, PNAS, Advanced Materials, Matter, etc.

Our mission is to pioneer innovations that enable advanced materials and structures to interact with their environments in intelligent, efficient, and adaptive ways through multidisciplinary approaches, merging material science, chemistry, physics, and a broad range of engineering disciplines. The core of our research is the exploration and development of multiscale, multifunctional smart structures and materials, which possesses the remarkable ability to sense, actuate, and adapt to various physical and chemical stimuli. These smart systems are engineered to exhibit coordinated movement, out-of-equilibrium dynamics, and other novel forms of physical adaptability, setting the platform for unprecedented multifunctionalities.

Our focus is twofold. We aim to rationally design versatile materials, starting from the molecular level up to the mesoscale. By carefully manipulating material properties at these fundamental levels, we aim to unlock new insights into fundamental sciences while encoding exceptional properties into these smart materials. Beyond material design, we focus on the structural aspects of these smart materials—how they are self-assembled or directed to assemble through their basic building blocks. By mastering this structural design, we can achieve extraordinary, material-independent performance in the resulting smart structures.

Our approach not only advances the understanding of material behavior but also explores how to manufacture these materials into versatile, high-performance structures through versatile methods such as microfabrication strategies like UV lithography, two-photon polymerization, vat polymerization, direct-ink/laser-writing, or electrospinning, etc. Our research has far-reaching implications across various applications. The intelligent devices we fabricate have potential applications in soft robotics, wearable electronics, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), optics, and biomedical and healthcare applications, all aiming to push the boundaries of what smart materials and structures can achieve, ultimately serving the well-being of humanity.