Jun.-Prof. Hongye Sun was appointed as a Junior Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at TU Ilmenau on 31 May 2023. She currently leads the Functional Materials Group and lectures master's students. Her research delves into flexible electronics, covering stretchable material formulation, 3D printed sensors, electronic circuits, and device integration.
Jun.-Prof. Sun earned her M.S. and Ph.D. from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, mentored by Prof. Matthew Ming-Fai YUEN. Her Ph.D. thesis focused on the development of high-performance epoxy-based thermal interface materials. Between 2017 and 2022, she served as a postdoctoral researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) under Prof. Norbert Willenbacher, pioneering a method to enhance the electrical conductivity and stretchability of elastomers used in flexible electronics. Before joining TU Ilmenau, Dr. Sun was an R&D chemist at Henkel's Innovation Center, specializing in thermal interface materials for electrical batteries.
At TU Ilmenau, Jun-Prof. Sun's research will concentrate on developing stretchable, flexible conductive materials. The primary objective is to create versatile materials that can be used in the fabrication of actuators, sensors, and circuits for applications in smart textiles and wearable technology. Additionally, she is dedicated to the integration of microchips, resistors, and other electronic components into flexible substrates, exploring the durability of flexible electronics under repeated flexing and stretching.