Materials Science & Engineering at Illinois Grainger Engineering

Work featured on the cover of the Journal of Materials Chemistry B (Royal Society of Chemistry), led by Assistant Professor Yuecheng "Peter" Zhou and graduate student Xuchen Ren, developed a tunable, label-free optical platform using the polymer PEDOT:PSS to record bioelectric signals without disruptive electrodes or dyes — successfully demonstrating the technique by capturing electrical activity in embryonic chicken hearts.

This work lays the foundation for next-generation, non-invasive tools to study electrical activity in living tissue, with an eye toward future in vivo applications.

Tunable platform enables label-free optical recording of bioelectric activity Materials graduate student Xuchen Ren, with undergraduate researcher Alexandra Kuhlman-Schneider, found that adding chloride ions during electropolymerization of PEDOT:PSS thin films shifts their electrochromic response and reshapes voltage sensitivity across wavelengths. Using chloride-free films,....

Materials researchers will be able to continue pushing boundaries through artificial intelligence with the upcoming Illinois Polymer Maker Lab, housed in the Beckman Institute at Illinois. It is a unique facility for automated formulation and testing of polymer-based materials and will soon be open for innovation.

“The IPML facility at Beckman provides researchers with an incredible opportunity to accelerate the development of polymer-based formulations through the creation of rich, digital datasets using automated equipment and workflows," said Associate Research Professor Dan Krogstad.

Beckman’s new Illinois Polymer Maker Lab commissions first instrument The Illinois Polymer Maker Lab, Beckman’s newest core facility, will open soon in the institute’s basement. The lab will be the first-of-its-kind facility for the automated formulation and testing of polymer-based materials and will soon be open to researchers across campus and across the nation...

Wenjie Zhou is co-investigator on a new U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission project to build the AI-enabled data infrastructure needed to 3D-print fusion fuel capsules for inertial fusion energy.

The project, led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (PI: Raspberry Simpson), brings together LLNL's Xiaoxing Xia, Stanford's Doug James, and Zhou at Illinois to replace today's massive mesh-based 3D-printing files with compact, AI-driven geometry and print-path planning, plus a "digital twin" that catches printing defects before any material is used.

Zhou's group builds two key interfaces: one that translates planned print paths into machine-readable printer commands, and another that predicts how a printed capsule will actually turn out, catching defects like over-curing or distortion before any material is used..

Wenjie Zhou to help build AI-enabled data pipelines for 3D-printed fusion targets under DOE's Genesis Mission Assistant Professor Wenjie Zhou is part of a DOE Genesis Mission project led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to build AI-enabled data pipelines that will make it possible to 3D-print fusion fuel capsules at the scale and precision needed for inertial fusion energy, replacing today's unwiel...

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign shattered records this year when it honored 52 winners of National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. Of that class, eleven total students are from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Congratulations to all!

Materials students shine in record-breaking Illinois NSF Graduate Research Fellowship class Seven materials science and engineering students were named 2026 NSF Graduate Research Fellows. Their success helped drive Illinois to its highest-ever total of 52 awardees, an institutional record in the GRFP program.

Founder Professor Axel Hoffmann, in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, has demonstrated a new way to generate ultra-pure, tunable magnetic oscillations by pumping microwaves into a thin-film magnetic material. Published in Nature Communications, the discovery offers a cleaner, more controllable alternative to existing techniques and could advance microwave signal processing, low-power spintronics and unconventional computing.

Hoffmann team unveils new way to generate self-sustained spin wave oscillations Researchers led by Founder Professor Axel Hoffmann, working with collaborators at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, discovered that pumping microwaves into a yttrium iron garnet thin film can trigger four-wave mixing to produce ultra-narrow-linewidth, tuna...

Mid-GLAM camp is accomplishing its goal with flying colors, if you listen to what middle school students who participated this year had to say. Several of them said they are already certain they want to be engineers in their future careers.

Mid-GLAM camp encourages fun, materials science exploration The 2026 edition of Mid-GLAM, a day camp for middle school students hosted by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, helped students build a greater interest in STEM career paths. Groups took part in fun, hands-on projects using everyday materials.

Founder Professor Axel Hoffmann and postdoctoral researcher Myoung-Woo Yoo have built the first magnetic multipole-based micromagnetic model for antiferromagnets, using Mn₃Sn to reveal domain-wall dynamics and textures previous models couldn't capture.

This gives the spintronics field a much-needed theoretical and computational foundation for designing future antiferromagnetic devices for data storage, signal generation and information processing. This research was published in Applied Physics Reviews (AIP Publishing).

Numerical modeling captures complex behavior of noncollinear antiferromagnets   Founder Professor Axel Hoffmann and postdoctoral researcher Myoung-Woo Yoo developed the first magnetic multipole-based micromagnetic model for noncollinear antiferromagnets, using Mn₃Sn to capture domain-wall dynamics and other non-uniform magnetic textures that existing analytic models could ...

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Yuecheng "Peter" Zhou on receiving funding from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF)!

Zhou's research will investigate electrodeposition, a low-energy technique that could help separate asphaltenes — molecules in crude oil that clump together and cause costly downtime during production. By building a new electrochemical imaging platform, his team aims to uncover the fundamental mechanisms behind asphaltene deposition, paving the way for scaling the method up for industrial use in the petroleum industry.

Zhou lands ACS grant to crack asphaltene buildup problem Assistant Professor Yuecheng

The 2026 ASM Materials Camp for Teachers brought together educators from Illinois and elsewhere to learn about ways they can get their students excited about materials science concepts and STEM education in their classrooms.

In one instance, a teacher is attending multiple materials summer camps this year before launching a materials science class at her school in Wisconsin.

ASM materials camp helps teachers build up next generation Each summer, educators gather at Illinois for the ASM Materials for Teachers Camp, spending a week performing hands-on experiments in ceramics, composites, metals and polymers, with the goal of bringing back an enthusiasm for materials science to their classrooms. Veteran attendees describe the 202...