Engineering light for the next generation of technology

What do the internet, endoscopic lenses and solar panels have in common?

It's their reliance on how light interacts with materials — an area core to Sui Yang’s research.

Every time a message is sent across the internet, an image is captured or energy is generated, light is absorbed, redirected or converted inside a material. Yang, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, studies how that light moves through optical materials.

Optical materials can transmit, reflect, refract or manipulate light, determining how technologies such as lenses, mirrors, solar energy systems and information technology function.

For decades, materials scientists and engineers have controlled light by shaping optical materials at the structural level. An example of an optical material widely used in the industry is silicon, which is known as the foundation of modern electronics. To push performance further and use it for emerging technologies, scientists design increasingly smaller silicon configurations. But the smaller they get, the harder it gets to fundamentally modify how light behaves.

In a research project funded by a 2026 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award, Yang intends to develop a new way to control how light interacts with materials.

“This idea represents a completely new direction in the field,” Yang says.

A key factor in optimizing any material is understanding the properties that drive its behavior. In optical materials, the refractive index determines how light moves through a material and what it can be used for.

Most natural optical materials have a positive refractive index, meaning light bends in a predictable way as it passes through them. In contrast, metamaterials are engineered to control how light behaves, with refractive indices that can range from positive to negative — something not found in nature. This unique capability allows light to move and refract in unconventional ways, enabling applications such as ultra-high-resolution microscopes, augmented and virtual reality, cloaking, and advanced sensing, computing and communication technologies.

The approach used to make these metamaterials relies on structures that are much larger than molecules, which restricts how precisely light can be controlled.

With support from the CAREER Award, Yang’s research aims to go beyond that limit by moving to the molecular scale, using molecules as the fundamental building blocks to control how light behaves.

Yang plans to focus on perovskites, a class of semiconductor materials known for their unique atomically thin layers with tiny gaps between them. These gaps create an opportunity to organize molecules with unusual precision.

“Combining chemistry and metamaterials design, we can control how the molecules connect with each other,” Yang says. “We can add another degree of freedom flow to tune the property.”

Instead of changing a material’s shape or structure from the outside, this approach allows Yang to adjust how it interacts with light from within.

One way to picture this is that the material is like an apartment building. The atomic structure of the material — in this case, the perovskite — forms the building with a fixed layout of rooms, while the molecules act as tenants placed within them. Just like how the placement of tenants influences how the entire building functions, by arranging the molecules, Yang can change how the entire material functions, including how it interacts with light.

At the molecular scale, a material’s properties are governed by quantum mechanics, specifically how electrons are distributed and interact. By organizing molecules, Yang can tune quantum interactions, such as electron confinement, coupling and symmetry, directly affecting how the material absorbs, emits and bends light in ways that are not accessible with conventional materials.

If successful, this approach could open the door to new technologies. Materials designed at the molecular level could lead to faster and more energy-efficient communication systems, improved imaging and sensing technologies, and new ways of processing information using light at the quantum level.

Arranging billions of molecules in a precise, repeating structure is no small task.

“There’s no tool to grab and place molecules where you want at this scale,” Yang says.

Yang’s background uniquely positions him to take on this challenge. He brings together expertise across multiple fields, with training in chemistry, materials science and optical physics, along with more than 15 years of experience studying how light interacts with materials.

He says the CAREER Award makes it possible to pursue his ambitious, high-risk, high-reward idea. The award also emphasizes education, which will enable him to train students in the emerging field while contributing to the project.

Looking ahead, Yang sees broad implications of this work for the future of technology. As demand for advanced computing, more precise sensing and more sustainable energy systems grows, the ability to control light at the molecular level could unlock capabilities that current materials cannot achieve.

Anthony Waas, director of the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, highlights Yang’s unwavering effort to understand materials at increasingly smaller scales and the significance of his approach.

“Being able to modify a material’s optical properties at the molecular level has significant implications for a variety of emerging technologies,” Waas says. “Yang is a prolific researcher, and his diverse background positions him well to take on this research endeavor. I look forward to the exciting new contributions he’ll make to the field and society through this work.”