Research Interest

Richard Feynman said: “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom.” I was particularly interested in nanomaterials, whose distinctive properties can help us overcome many limits of bulk materials. However, commercialization of nanomaterials still entails further research. For instance, graphene was discovered more than a decade ago, helping Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov win the Nobel Prize in 2010. However, it is still difficult to find graphene-based device in real life. To elicit potentials of nanomaterials, my research primarily has been focusing on stabilization and maintenance of nanomaterials, while developing methods to expedite their commercialization for prospective use.

During Master's years, my research has been focused on halide perovskites, synthesizing high-quality thin-film with large scale and processing it into devices for commercialization. First, enabling patterning to shape film I proposed a bottom-up approach that uses pre-defined hydrophobic soft-matters as a template of growth, thereby enabling pattern formation of perovskite film without degradation. Furthermore, in order to improve hybrid perovskite film's stability, I shifted the perovskite's anion from less stable iodide to bromine by integrating the halide anion exchange process with the previously mentioned patterning process. Each research was published in Chemistry of Materials and Small as the first author, I received high remarks from Korean Institute of Chemical Engineers.

After coming to UCI as a Ph.D. candidate, I switched the gear from Engineering to Material Science, because more than anyone else, I felt a lack of fundamental background to keep studying nanomaterials. With the guidance of Prof. Law, now I'm studying quantum dots - which show completely different properties from bulk materials - but through connecting dots, eventually what I pursue is mimicking bulk materials 'properties. Through this 'confined' but 'connected' mesoscale superstructure quantum dot film, I'm still pursuing my goal- expedite nanomaterials and try to utilize them in a real-world devices, even though focusing materials are different from my previous work.