Tag line: patenting a glass to make cracked phone screens a thing of the past
Position: ARC Future Fellow
Organisation: Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
One of Dr Hou’s research interests is regulating the physical and chemical properties of microporous glass materials, and realising efficient separation, catalysis and energy applications. What does this mean?
Dr Hou is currently leading a global team of researchers who developed technology to produce next-generation composite glass for lighting LEDs and screens on smartphones, televisions and computers!
The team found that encasing extremely sensitive nanocrystals called lead-halide perovskites in porous glass makes them suitable for practical use because it gives the structure an evenness, unlike traditional glass.
Their findings may enable the manufacture of glass screens that are not only unbreakable but also deliver crystal clear image quality and could be applied in new generation solar cells for renewable electricity or biomedical imaging applications.
Dr Hou and his colleagues are using an artificial intelligence-powered robotic platform to automate and process data so they can direct their time into other innovations.
Dr Hou was named an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in 2021, and the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award in 2018.
He joined the University of Queensland in 2019 after receiving his Ph.D in Chemical Engineering in 2015 (University of NSW) and working at the UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology (2015-2017) and University of Cambridge (2017-2019, affiliate of the Trinity College) for his post-doctoral research.