Precision in Production!
Manufacturing research is pursuing advancements in more complex and delicate structures to facilitate innovative functionalities enabled by precision manufacturing at micro- and nano-scale. These developments are driving revolutions across various industrial sectors, including medical devices, optics, IT, energy, and instruments. The industry’s focus is on achieving higher precision, efficiency, and sustainability in production processes. This target is facilitated by cutting-edge research in academia and synergy between universities and industry, paving the way for advanced solutions that address complex engineering challenges.
Dr. Jufan Zhang, an Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator, is making major contributions to this field. With a background rich in scientific exploration and research, he has dedicated his career to advancing the field of ultra-precision machining and micro/nano-manufacturing. His work at the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University College Dublin (UCD) includes supervising young researchers, leading impactful research projects, coordinating courses, and conducting industrial collaborations. The university’s support and resources have enabled Jufan to make significant strides in his research, contributing to the development of innovative solutions that have the potential to revolutionize industrial applications globally.
UCD Centre of Micro/Nano Manufacturing Technology (MNMT-Dublin), where Jufan is a key faculty member and young leader, is a hub for pioneering research in advanced manufacturing and providing full-range technical support to local companies. Leading a research group at MNMT-Dublin, Jufan focuses on solving complex industrial problems and overcoming market barriers. His work is crucial in shaping the next generation of engineers, guiding them through both theoretical and practical aspects of design and manufacturing and inspiring them to innovate and excel in their pursuits.
Let’s explore Jufan’s unique teaching approach for next-gen engineers:
Cross-Continental Leap in Manufacturing Research
Jufan was enthusiastic about scientific exploration during college; thus, unsurprisingly, he conducted a PhD training to improve his innovation capabilities and strengthen his research skills. After graduating with his doctorate, he longed to join a world-class research center to widen his vision and deepen his insights into manufacturing research.
University College Dublin (UCD) established the Centre of Micro/Nano Manufacturing Technology (MNMT-Dublin) in 2016, sponsored by Science Foundation Ireland via a prestigious fund to the center director, Prof. Fengzhou Fang, to attract talents worldwide for forming a synergy on developing cutting-edge manufacturing research in Ireland. Jufan had the opportunity to join MNMT-Dublin as a founding member, and he cherished this chance to create a new journey in his career. Thus, he joined UCD, traveling across 9000 kilometers from China.
Jufan is now leading a research group in micro and nano-manufacturing in UCD, specializing in driving new solutions for medical devices, optics, and renewable energy systems by applying his knowledge and expertise in manufacturing. He is a principal investigator in MNMT-Dublin, a funded investigator in the Science Foundation Ireland I-Form Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, a member of the UCD AI Healthcare Hub (AIHH), a member of the Una Europa Self-Steering Committee on Future Materials, and a Member of the Irish Manufacturing Council. He is active in solving challenging problems for the industry by applying interdisciplinary research.
Educating the Next Generation of Engineers
He coordinates and teaches several courses on both the main campus and the international campus of University College Dublin, including Design 1, Design 2, Automotive Design, Thermodynamics 1, Manufacturing I, and Manufacturing II. He supervises postdoctoral research fellows, PhD students, master’s students, and undergraduate students at UCD. Attracted by his research, visiting scholars, visiting PhD students, and visiting undergraduate students from the US, UK, and China frequently visited his lab for thematic research.
He is also serving in several international committees and academic associations. A representative achievement is that he participated in the establishment of the International Academy of Engineering and Technology (AET) and has worked as chief executive secretary. He contributed a lot of efforts to membership recruitment and management, which evidenced the fast growth of AET, having 152 members from 22 countries globally now.
His goal is to establish a renowned team in manufacturing research, especially in micro/nano functional structures, and develop cutting-edge solutions to revolutionize industrial applications.
Innovative Teaching Methods in Design and Manufacturing
As Jufan teaches design and manufacturing, the disciplines are highly renowned for their hands-on skills and practice, which is a practical approach to deepening the understanding of theoretical knowledge and improving operation expertise. Therefore, his major teaching philosophy is to “make learning fun via practice.”
For example, he made a systematic curriculum design for his Design series modules (Design 1, Design 2, and Automotive Design) and gradually enlarged the practice portion and difficulties. In Design 1, students are required to do some theoretical design, simulation, and analysis work to familiarize them with essential design principles and tools. In Design 2, two team projects are assigned for designing and fabricating physical models, based on which tests are made for evaluating the actual performance. In Automotive Design, a large-scale project is conducted to fabricate a vehicle utilizing the knowledge and skills learned from Design 1 and Design 2, as well as other mechanical-related modules. Such a stepwise progressing methodology more effectively engages the students in learning.
He likes using case studies and examples from the real world to elaborate on abstract knowledge and methods, as well as making the assignments closely connected to our daily lives to give the students a concrete idea of how to apply the learning in practice.
Pioneering Advanced Manufacturing
Jufan has been working in advanced manufacturing since 2006 when he started his PhD project. Since joining University College Dublin, he has mainly focused on developing innovative solutions to enable the revolution of medical devices, optics, renewable energy systems, and industrial manufacturing by closely collaborating with industry, as well as deploying fundamental research in atomic and close-to-atomic scale manufacturing (ACSM).
Some research projects being implemented by his team include:
- Design and manufacture wearable hollow-microneedle transdermal drug delivery devices for large-volume (up to 2 ml) self-injection, dissolving-microneedle patches for controllable release of drugs, and automated solid-microneedle rollers for high-end cosmetic applications.
- Fabrication of large-scale solid-state nanopore array and micropore array chips for high-throughput molecular detection to enable low-cost DNA sequencing, diagnosis of early-stage cancer, early diagnosis of virus infection, and so on. Current progress evidenced over 2.6 billion solid-state nanopores in a 100mm2 chip, with excellent uniformity in shape, size, density, as well as controllable 3D pore geometry.
- Design and manufacture ultra-thin ultra-light optical lenses for AR display to revolutionize AR devices. The current design realizes an AR lens as thin as 1.5–2 mm with less than 10 g of weight.
- Micro-textured artificial joints for improved tribological performance extend the lifespan of commercial products, potentially reducing the cost, suffering, and risks of patients. Lab data proved a 45% reduction in wear.
- Disruptive solutions in ACSM enable the manufacturing of microscopic components and push forward the frontier of manufacturing. Dr. Zhang proposed a directed atomic migration mechanism to regulate the massive behavior of atoms under external energy stimulus to form some extraordinary micro- and nano-scale structures for brilliant properties.
Delivering Value through Research
Jufan opened new research directions at University College Dublin to match the industrial needs in Ireland and the EU, which brought him quite a lot of challenges at the beginning with few resources available. Especially without a sufficient track record in these new research areas, it was impossible to apply for funding to support the development of his research and team. He started with some small internal funding and some overseas funding for PhD students, and he reached out to the industry for some in-kind contributions. Then, he sought academic collaboration with established professors to accumulate key resources for his research.
He is active in solving challenging problems faced by industry and the market. But usually, such problems are quite time-consuming and commercially sensitive, require long-term, deep investigation, and sometimes result in unsatisfactory outputs in publications. Especially patents significantly impede publications, which are KPIs for academic staff. The alternative rewards come from the recognition by the industry of the value of his research, embodied by his extensive collaboration with global companies.
He desires to bring genuine value to the industry and market, and further to the end-users, by delivering new products and services. This attracted industrial grants and spin-out company opportunities, which is not only an acknowledgment of his research philosophy but also reflects how his research has tangible impacts on the world.
According to Jufan, the development of deep technology is always challenging, consuming researchers’ patience and confidence, frustrating them once and again, and even unable to produce commensurate outputs eventually compared to their inputs. Keeping the original faith is not easy! His research on solid-state nanopore arrays has been conducted for over four years to solve a fundamental technical barrier to the low-cost and efficient manufacturing of large-scale nanopore chips. Although he successfully developed a new method and fabricated the world’s first large-scale solid-state nanopore array chip eventually, from an academic perspective, such basic research without fantastic data from applications is less appealing to high-impact journals. However, the industry highly recognizes this research and its potential revolution for the market, which generates two patents and three industrial collaborations.
Creating a Global Impact
- Jufan’s short-term career goals: He aims to build up his reputation as a young leader in the micro/nano manufacturing area and establish a platform for customized design and manufacturing of micro/nano functional components. This will enable disruptive solutions and products to have significant impacts on the medical device sector and benefit global patients.
- Jufan’s long-term career goals: He plans to revolutionize the industrial production mode by providing innovative manufacturing solutions to create sustainable impacts in sectors like biomedical devices, optics, energy and manufacturing. He intends to bring ACSM into the practical production of some selected industrial sectors to demonstrate this new manufacturing paradigm. His goal is to develop his research group into a prestigious team globally.
Build Up a Platform to Enable More
Jufan sees his work influencing his students and the academic community at large in the following ways:
- He provides platform technology to enable a variety of associated research and applications, contributing to a wider community. Multiple research organizations are collaborating with him based on his featured research.
- He delivers applicable solutions to the industry to empower the development of new products and services. Over ten companies globally have provided positive comments on his research.
- He provides a platform for inspiring and supporting the talents who want to devote themselves to manufacturing technology innovations, encourages the students to explore deep tech without pressure or fear of the unknown, and offers significant help to their growth.
- He provides opportunities for the students to contact and collaborate with industry, to widen their vision and facilitate their critical thinking independently, and to prepare for their future career development.
Mastering Time and Task Management
Excellent capability in time management and task management is essential for Jufan to achieve high efficiency, doing more in a limited time. Simultaneously, enriching the work outputs benefits from his good planning and cohesive teamwork. Finally, diligence is always useful to make him more productive, regardless of his talent or circumstances.
From Micro and Nano to Atomic Scale Manufacturing
In Jufan’s opinion, nanopores are one of the most exciting discoveries in biomedical research, enabling some extraordinary applications such as DNA sequencing. However, manufacturing nanopores in engineering materials (called solid-state nanopores) is quite challenging, with very limited successful commercialization cases to date. Commercial DNA sequencing devices use biological nanopores, which are existing molecules extracted from nature.
Lab attempts in the last two decades have made some advancements in solid-state nanopore fabrication, but most methods are still creating a single nanopore at a time, with low efficiency and high cost, thus not competent for supporting industrial applications. Jufan invented a hybrid manufacturing method (called FAST), which can fabricate up to 2.6 billion nanopores in a 100 mm2 small chip within 2-3 hours, with a cost below 50 EUR.
This brings a new possibility for high-throughput molecular detections. Some application scenarios foreseen by his industrial partners include diagnosis of early-stage cancer, identification of early-stage virus infection, low-cost DNA sequencing, and so on. Therefore, Jufan made one of the most representative achievements in nanopore manufacturing and possibly enables a variety of research and applications.
Atomic and close-to-atomic scale manufacturing (ACSM) is the core of Manufacturing III, which is a new manufacturing paradigm proposed in the recent decade and is still in its infancy stage. ACSM is totally different from the contemporary industrial manufacturing mode, as ACSM is based on quantum theory and relies on atomic interactions.
For ACSM, the processing object is not materials as conventional manufacturing does; instead, it directly manipulates atoms and molecules. ACSM represents the latest trend in the manufacturing area, which is a key research topic for Jufan. He has observed atomic migration in his research for forming functional nanostructures and is trying to apply this cutting-edge research to irregular nanopore manufacturing.
Keeping Pace with Progress
To stay current with developments in his field, Jufan follows the following strategies:
- Regular literature review is an effective approach for Jufan to keep up with the state of the art, which is commonly used by researchers.
- Close contact and collaboration with the industry can keep him informed of the latest advancements in the field and market and also inspire new ideas.
- Innovations in methodology can create new possibilities for his research and keep him progressing.
- Identifying the gaps in research and the most challenging topics in the field can also make his research different from most, although this would bring more difficulties.
- Setting up a target and regularly reviewing and updating the target can ensure continuous professional development. Realizing his shortage and distance from the top of the field can always stimulate him to progress.
Inspiration from a Mentor
Jufan’s supervisor of his career, Prof. Fengzhou Fang, is an example to learn from. Prof. Fang is one of the most successful and influential professors in global manufacturing research (present President of CIRP, Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and Member of the Academy of Europe). Working with Prof. Fang always drives him personally to endeavor more.
Pursuing perfection is a key driving force for his non-stop exploration of research and innovation. The motto of his research center is “Excellence arises from a world of integrity, tranquility, and diligence.”.
Advice from an Academic
Jufan’s advice to students and early-career academics who aspire to follow a similar path is, “Focus on your interest, endeavor all yourself, and persevere with no fear or hesitation. For anything, if you can insist for 15 years, it is possible to become one of the best in the area.”
