Highlights

Dr. Zhang is a pioneer and world leader for her outstanding research achievements and creativity in micro/nanotechnology, especially in high efficiency energy harvesting and self-powering devices & systems. Her research has impacted the field of MEMS field in a number of aspects, such as developing mass production technology of micro-nano structures with high surface charging density based on MEMS fabrication to enhance the performance of triboelectric nanogenerator, applying piezoelectric, magnetic and triboelectric principles for hybrid nanogenerator, and high efficiency energy management circuit to achieve long-term power supply for microsystems, her contributions of active sensing and smart skin also inspect the academic field worldwide.

Dr. Zhang has productive scientific output and won numbers of Awards/Honors. She authored and co-authored 250+ peer reviewed scientific articles on the prestigious journals such as, Energy & Environmental Science, Nano Energy, Nano Letters，ACS Nano，Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, et al. She edited and co-edited 8 books and book chapters, and held 42 patents including 3 US patents. She has delivered 100+ plenaries, keynotes, invited and seminar talks at international and national academic conferences as well as universities and research institutions. She is very active in academic service, was the founder and general Chair of IEEE NEMS conference, NTC Beijing Chapter Chair. She serves on editorial board of IEEE Tnano, JMEMS, Microsystem and Nanoengineering, et al.

Dr. Zhang is an excellent teacher. She has supervised over 5 postdoctoral fellows and visiting scientists, 18 PhD students, 25 MS students and 15 international visiting researchers & students. Among those she has supervised, 10 of them are faculty in universities and research institutions. Her students have received 50+ awards/honors from Peking University and professional societies for best Thesis, best paper/poster presentations and other academic achievements.

Dr. Zhang is the founder and general chair of the International Contest of innovation (iCAN) since 2007, iCAN is the biggest collaborative platform among academia & industry & young generation to stimulate the innovations. Now, every year 50K+ young students from 20 countries and regions participant in iCAN, projects cover the smart hardwares and software, etc.

Dr. Zhang has initiated “iCAN-PKU” Innovation MOOC in PKU and promote it into national level at 2016, 500+ universities and 200K+ students benefited. She has delivered 500+ “Innovation” serial lectures in high/middle school, universities and public in last few years, her talk merged high-tech, legend, magic, happiness and humorous, guiding the audience into an exciting innovative world, which made her talk very popular and enjoyable in mainland china.

Dr. Zhang has initiated “iCANX” global online science talks at April 2020. In past year, every Friday iCANX Talks host 120+ Top scientists worldwide, and 15million audiences had watched the online show from different part of the world. iCANX Talks becomes the phenomena in the international academical community during COVID19.

Dr. Zhang won National Invention Award of Science & Technology at 2006, Education Award at 2013 and 2017 in Beijing City, Geneva Invention Gold Medal at 2014. She was honored as the Excellence Teachers in Beijing City at 2017, Top10 supervisors in Peking University at 2017. She won the Medal of May Day in 2018. She won the 2nd prize of National Education Award 2018 and elected as the member of Innovation Education Committee in Chinese Ministry of Education at 2018. She was listed in Forbes Top 50 Female Scientists at China in 2020.

Education & Career Path

• Dec. 1998, received her Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
• July 1995, received her MS degree in Electrical Engineering from the Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China.
• July 1992, received her BS degree in Electrical Engineering from the Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, Anhui Province, China.
• 1999-2001, Post Doctoral researcher, Tsinghua University,
• 2001-, Assistant (2001), Associated (2004) and Full professor (2008), Peking University
• 2004-2005, Visiting professor, University of California at Davis/Berkeley
• 2005-2006, Visiting professor, Case Western Reserve University

Professional Community Services

• Co-Founder of IEEE NEMS 2006, General Chair of the IEEE NEMS 2013/Suzhou, 2021/Xiamen
• General Chair of IEEE MEMS2021
• Program committees of IEEE MEMS, NEMS, IEEE Nano, Transducers, MNE, 3M Nano.
• Chair of MINE international conferences, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
• Organizing chair of Transducers2011 Beijing
• Chair of IEEE NTC Beijing Chapter
• Board members of Scientific Advisory Board of Université Paris-Est (France)
• Board members of Scientific Advisory Board of EPFL(Switzerland)
• Board members of Piaget Award for miniaturization (Switzerland)
• Member of Chinese Innovation Education Committee at 2018
• Associated Chief Editor of IEEE-TANO, Microsystems & Nanoengineering
• Editorial Member: IEEE-JMEMS, IET MNL, IET JoE, Journal of Electronic Research & Application, Colloids & Surfaces A: Physicochemical & Engineering Aspects, American Journal of Nanomedicine & Nanobiotechnology, Soft Science.

iCANX Platform

• Founder and General Chair of iCAN Contest and Association: The International Contest of Innovation (iCAN) is founded at 2007 in mainland China, covers different levels from graduated/college/high/Middle Schools, 50K+ participants each year.
• Founder of iCANX platform: this is a public online science talks series initiated at April 2020, it broadcasts globally every Friday, more than 15M audience worldwide till now.
• Founder of iCAN•PKU Innovation MOOC, this is a course of innovation and entrepreneurship since 2016, covers 700+ universities and 550K+ students in mainland China. 2017 was listed in National Excellence MOOC.

Honor & Awards

• National Invention Award of Science & Technology at 2006
• Teaching Award in Beijing City, 2013
• Geneva Invention Gold Medal at 2014
• Excellence Teachers in Beijing City, 2017
• Top10 supervisors in Peking University, 2017
• Medal of May Day, 2018
• 2nd prize of National Education Award 2018
• Forbes Top 50 Female Scientists at China in 2020

Research Grants and Funding

Dr. Zhang has received funding from NSFC, MOST, MOE, Samsung, Huawei, International projects, etc. The total funding for supporting her research from 2001 to today is 45M RMB.

Research Interests and Accomplishments

• High Performance Triboelectric Nanogenerators

Zhang invented the high performance Triboelectric Nanogenerators (TENGs). Developing novel energy harvesting technologies is the key for long term stability of MEMS/NEMS and IoT systems. It is highly desired for. Zhang developed the first Sandwich-typed TENG with micro-nano dual structure surface (Nano Letters, 2013, 13, 1168-1172), which has high output voltage 465V, current 107.5μA, power density achieved 53.4mW/cm³, and she introduced controllable surface treatment technologies to enlarge the friction surface and enhance surface charge density (Nano Energy, 2014, 4, 123-131; Nano Energy, 2015, 11, 304-322). She is the first investigator of surface energy by using first-principle calculations (Langmiur, 2013, 29, 10769-10775). Zhang invented the first transparent and flexible single-friction-surface triboelectric generator (STEG) (EES, 2013, 11, 3235-3240), which achieved the open-circuit voltage 130 V with a short-circuit current density of about 1mAcm^-2. She developed the first electrode-free TENG for harvesting biomechanical energy from motions, the electricity can be obtained from any part of human body, The output voltage 810 V is achieved and charge over 550 nC is transferred in one step of an adult's walking (Nano Energy, 2015, 12, 19-25). Zhang demonstrated the large scale fabrication and performance enhancement strategies of TENGs based on MEMS and IC fabrication technologies (Nano Energy, 2013, 11, 1101-1106), such as DRIE and FPCB, which opened the market of TENGs in many applications.

• Hybrid Energy Harvesting Technology

Zhang pioneered the field of hybrid energy harvesting technology. In order to harvest the environment energy in High efficiency, Zhang first invented the hybrid nanogenerator which made the simple r-shaped structure can harvest the energy both by triboelectric/piezo principle (ACS Nano, 2013, 10, 8554-8560), enhance the output of PENG and TENG can achieved 10.95mW/cm³与2.04mW/cm³ respectively. Later on, she invented the wavy-shaped structure which can drive 3 hybrid nanogenerators, it can charge a 1uF capacitor to 25V in 1mins (Nanoscale, 2017, 9, 1263-1270). In addition, Zhang developed the Magnetic-Triboelectric hybrid generator to harvest the vibration energy from all directions, it can fully charge a 20μF to 7V in 200s (Scientific Reports, 2014, 4, 4811). These research works possess unique characteristics such as the dependence of configurations, the controllable enhancing/weakening trend and amplitude, and multi-level output (AEM, 2015, 1500187), opens a window in exploring the high efficiency energy harvester to meet the needs of long term power supply.

• High efficiency Power Management technology for Energy harvesting system

Zhang first discovered the high efficiency power management technology for TENGs. TENG has emerging as an important approach for energy harvesting. However, low charging efficiency as well as low power conversion efficiency have restricted its practical application for powering traditional electronics, Zhang invented a power management (PM) strategy by extracting maximum energy from TENG and transferring the energy to storage unit employing optimized Inductor-Capacitor (LC) oscillating (Nano Energy, 2017, 38, 438-446). Over 2600 times improvement in stored energy than standard circuit was achieved, and more than 72% alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) power transfer efficiency was obtained for different modes TENGs. In addition, she implemented an integrated self-charging power unit (SCPU) with a triboelectric nanogenerator and supercapacitor (JMCA, 2016, 4, 14298) which can simultaneously harvest and store energy during ambient vibration process. Several high quality supercapacitors were developed to match different applications, such as, reestanding Micro-Supercapacitor With Interdigital Electrodes for Low-Power Electronic Systems (JMEMS, 2017, 26/5, 1055-1061), All-fabric-based wearable self-charging power cloth (APL, 2017, 111, 073901), Highly Compressible Integrated Supercapacitor-Piezoresistance-Sensor System for long term health monitoring (Small, 2017, 1702091). This Power Unit provides a feasible solution for sustainable power supply and shows great potential in micro-energy fields and self-powered systems.

• Self-powered active sensing Technology & Multi-functional Smart Skin

Zhang pioneered the original idea of active sensing technology by combing electrification and electric-static and piezoelectric effect, for monitoring the weak signals, such as, position, motion, temperature, humidity, respiratory information and radial artery pulse, etc (Nano Energy, 2017, 32, 479-487; APL, 2018, 112, 203902). Zhang first proposed the self-powered analogue smart skin for detecting contact location and velocity of the object, its resolution can be achieved at 1.9 mm in 25cm³ area with only four terminals (ACS NANO, 2016, 10/4, 4083-4091). Zhang invented the first non-contact self-powered e-skin, it can serve as a human machine interface due to its ability to sense noncontact motions (AFM, 2018, 28, 1704641). Inspired by Finger anatomical structure, Zhang developed several finger-like e-skin devices, which can execute many complicated tasks and greatly expands the applications (Nano Energy, 2017,40, 65-72; AFM, 2017, 27, 1604434). Her continues discovery and breakthroughs in developing simple structure and high integration devices for self-powered active systems and push them closer to practical applications such as flexible electronics, wearable electronics, implantable device, etc. Dr. Zhang initiated the “all-in-one self-powered flexible microsystems” (Nano Energy, 2018, 47, 410-426) by introducing the technology of TENG around the following major categories: working principles, advanced materials, active sensors, actuators, et al, which has inspired the worldwide trend of integrated microsystems.

Invited Academic Lectrures (selected list from 2012-2019）

1. Haixia Zhang, All-in-One Self-Powered Smart System, IEEE Nano2019, Macau, China, July 24-26, 2019
2. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart Sensing System, Workshop on Flexible Electronics& Micro/Nano Sensing Technology, Xi’an, China, July 1st, 2019
3. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart Sensing System, NENS2019, Beijing, China, June 15-17, 2019
4. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart Sensing System, MEMS Summit2019, Xi’an, China, May 5-7, 2019
5. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart Sensing System, MRS2019, Phenix, USA, April 22-26, 2019
6. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart Sensing System, IEEE NEMS2019, BKK, Thailand, April 14-16, 2019
7. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart Sensing System, International Conference on AFM 2018, Nanjing, China, Dec.15-16, 2018
8. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart Sensing System, International Conference on Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology 2018, Qingdao, China, Oct.28-30, 2018
9. Haixia Zhang, Flexible& Stretchable Energy Harvesting Technology, International Symposium of Flexible & Stretchable Electronics(ISFSE), Wuhan, China June 29-30, 2018
10. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart Micro System, APCOT, Hongkong, China, June 24-26, 2018
11. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart System, NGPT, Seoul, Korea, May 8-11, 2018
12. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart System, PowerMEMS2017, Kanazawa, Japan, Nov.13-16, 2017
13. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart System, Beijing Microelectronics Summit, Beijing, October 30, 2017
14. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart System, MAN International Conference, Dalian, July 10, 2017
15. Haixia Zhang, Self-Powered Smart System, ISFSE, Wuhan, June 29, 2017
16. Haixia Zhang, Micro-Nano Energy, the key of future smart system, Advanced Materials2017, Xi’an, June14-16, 2017
17. Haixia Zhang, Microenergy technology for wearable devices, 2^nd Micro-nano optical symposium, Kaifeng, Henan, Nov. 12, 2016
18. Haixia Zhang, Challenge&Opportunity in Post Moore Era, Transducers Summit, Shanghai, Sep. 8, 2016
19. Haixia Zhang, Micro-Nano Energy, the key of future smart system, International Conference on Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology, Hangzhou, Oct.25-28, 2016
20. Haixia Zhang, Microenergy technology for wearable, Semiconductor Symposium, Jilin, July 27, 2016
21. Haixia Zhang, Self Powered Smart Sensing System, Nanoenergy&Nanosystems (NENS2016), Beijing. China, July13-15,2016
22. Haixia Zhang, Flexible & Stretchable Energy Harvesting Technology，International Symposium of Flexible & Stretchable Electronics(ISFSE), Wuhan, China, June 29-30, 2016
23. Haixia Zhang, Self Powered Smart Skin, NGPT2016, Roma, Italy, June 16-19, 2016
24. Haixia Zhang,Transparent Triboelectric Nanogenerator, 11th IEEE NEMS conference, Sendai, Japan, 17-20 April, 2016
25. Haixia Zhang,Energy Harvesting Technologyfor Wearable Smart Devices，2016 International Forum & Start-up Exhibition on Wearable Smart Devices, Seoul, Korea, April 5, 2016
26. Haixia Zhang, Mass Fabrication of Micro-nano Dual structures and its application in Green Energy, Microsystems & Nanoengineering Summit 2015, August 3-4, 2015
27. Haixia Zhang, High Performance Micro Energy Harvester for Wearable Devices, 2nd annual China International Energy Harvesting Summit 2015, Shanghai, May 27, 2015
28. Haixia Zhang, Microenergy technology for wearable applications, Smart Wearable devices symposium, Shenzhen, April 25, 2015
29. Haixia Zhang, Micro Energy Harvester for Implantable Devices, Symposium on “Nanogenerators and Piezotronics”, Spring 2015 Meeting of the MRS, San Francisco, USA, Apr 6-10, 2015
30. Haixia Zhang, High performance triboelectricial generators with hybrid mechanism, Materials Challenges in Alternative & Renewable Energy (MCARE 2015), Jeju, Korea, Feb. 24-27, 2015
31. Haixia Zhang, Smart System Powered by Triboelectric Generator, The Nanoenergy Nanosystem 2014 (NENS2014), Beijing, China, Dec. 8-10, 2014
32. Haixia Zhang, Micro energy harvester for implantable devices, The IEEE CPMT Symposium Japan (ICSJ2014), Kyoto, Japan, Nov. 4-6, 2014
33. Haixia Zhang, High Performance Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Self-Powering Smart System, The 14th International conference on Nanotechnology, Toronto, ON, Canada, August 18-21, 2014
34. Haixia Zhang, High Performance Triboelectric Generator with Micro-nano Dual Structures, 1st International Symposium on Energy Challenges and Mechanics, Aberdeen, UK, July 10-14, 2014
35. Haixia Zhang, Hybrid Triboelectric Generator and its Applications in Portable Electronics, 2nd International Conference on Nanogenerators and Piezotronics (NGPT), Atlanta, USA, June 9-11, 2014
36. Haixia Zhang, Hybrid Nanogenerator with Micro-Nano dual structure, IEEE Nano 2013, Beijing, China, Aug. 5-8, 2013
37. Haixia Zhang, Fabrication and Characterization of Micro/Nano Dual-scale Silicon Material by an Improved Deep Reactive Ion Etching Process, 6th International Conference on Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Auckland, New Zealand, Feb.10-15, 2013
38. Haixia Zhang, Mass Fabrication of 3D Micro/Nano Dual-scale Structures and applications, International Conference of Manufacturing Technology Engineer(ICMTE), Seoul, Korea, Oct. 18th, 2012
39. Haixia Zhang, Nano Fabrication for Novel Engergy Devices, International Conference on Manipulation, Manufacturing and Measurement on the Nanoscale (3M-NANO), Xi’an, Aug 30, 2012
40. Haixia Zhang, Novel Energy Harvesting Systems with dual Micro-Nano Structures, 4th International Conference “Smart Materials, Structures and Systems”(CIMTEC), Italy, June 11, 2012

Return to main page