Mingu Kim has been chosen for a Georgia Tech Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis Award. A recent graduate of the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Kim will be honored for his achievement at the Georgia Tech Sigma Xi Awards Banquet, which is tentatively planned for the late summer or during the fall semester.

Kim’s thesis is entitled “All-soft electronic devices and integrated microsystems enabled by liquid metal.” Lightweight, flexible, and stretchable wearable electronics have gained significant attention for various applications ranging from entertainment to healthcare, but the mechanical mismatch between soft biological skins and conventional rigid and bulky electronic materials often limits the ultimate usability and leads to hard-soft material interface failure. 

To circumvent this limitation, Kim explores novel wearable technologies using intrinsically soft liquid metal (eutectic gallium-indium alloy, or EGaIn) to realize all-soft and imperceptible electronic devices and integrated microsystems. EGaIn liquid metal benefits from low toxicity, low melting temperature, and favorable electrical conductivity and mechanical stretchability. His research spans from material characterization to device fabrication and system-level integration to develop building block technologies for: (i) high-resolution and multiscale liquid metal (EGaIn) patterning; (ii) soft passive/active electronic devices; (iii) soft physical, chemical, and biological sensing devices; (iv) soft energy storage devices; and (v) their 3D integration.

Kim graduated from Georgia Tech with his Ph.D. in ECE in May 2019 and is now a postdoctoral research fellow with the Bao Research Group at Stanford University in Stanford, California. He was advised by Oliver Brand, who is an ECE professor and the executive director for the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology.