Multifunctional Materials | Micro-and-Nanostructuring Laboratory

Our Work

As an emerging research group, the M3 Lab continually disseminates our discoveries in high impact journals and international conferences, patents new technologies that come out of our research, as well as collaborates with industrial, governmental, and academic partners in various strategic research areas.

Journal Articles

Our journal articles are published in high impact journals in the field of material science and engineering, chemical science and engineering, applied physics, etc. Several of our journal articles had been featured on the cover page of journals or had been the recognized as the most highly cited articles in specific journals.

Other Scholarly Work

We constantly disseminate our research findings in international technical conferences such as Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) ANTEC, SPE Foams, Biofoams, CSME Congress, Polymer Processing Society, SPIE Smart Structures/NDE, etc. This provides us opportunities to network with other fellow researchers and the industry.

Funded Research Work

Our work consists of both fundamental and applied research. A number of projects are at the junction of multiple disciplines. They involved interactions with institutional collaborators as well as funding supports from international and national industrial partners and government funding agencies, including NSERC, OCE, CFI, etc.

About M3

The M3 Lab focuses on advancing the sciences and improving the technology to develop micro-and-nanostructured bio, flexible, light-weight, and/or smart polymer material systems with tailored multifunctionality. Some example areas of applications include energy storage and harvesting, sensing and actuation, biomedical devices, thermal management, environmentally benign packaging, etc.

HIGHLIGHTS OF M3 LAB

Research Team

M3 Lab currently consists of a group of motivated highly qualified personnel, including 2 post-doctoral fellows, 2 Ph.D. students, 2 Master's students, and 2 undergraduate students.

Prof. Sunny Leung

Principal Investigator

PDF, Visting Scholars,

Graduate & UG Students

Alumni of

M3 Lab

Research Areas

Our research focuses on tailoring the smart and multifunctional properties of polymer material systems (e.g., blends, foams, composites and nanocomposites) through different novel and industrial viable micro-and-nanostructuring techniques. Some examples of our latest research are shown below:

Bio-based Multifunctional Materials

Bio-based materials are derived from renewable biomass resources such as vegetable fats and oils, corn starch, or pea starch. In broad terms, they can also be biocompatible, bioactive, and/or bioabsorbable. In order to encourage manufacturers to consider these environmentally-benign material systems as substitutes of petroleum-derived polymers in their products, our research aims to develop different micro-and-nanostructuring techniques to enhance and to tailor these materials’ multifunctional properties.

Smart Multifunctional Materials

Smart multifunctional materials have the ability to respond to stimuli, such as biological, chemical, electrical, mechanical, magnetic, thermal, and optical. Our research goal is to develop and fabricate smart multifunctional materials that can significantly alter its property (e.g., viscosity, volume, and conductivity) in response to external stimuli; and/or harvest energy from different energy sources (e.g., waste heat, deformation). Some possible applications include e-textile sensors, actuators, and energy harvester.

Advanced Thermal Management Materials

Advanced thermal management materials are urged by the microelectronic industry to cope with the surge of heat generation in chips of 3-D architectures. Our research aims to develop novel thermal management materials that are injection moldable to integrated heat-dissipating structures on electronic enclosures. We also conduct research to develop porous and flexible thermal management materials to fulfill the needs from new generation of electronics, heat exchangers, and biomedical devices.

M3 Lab consists of an outstanding team of engineers, scientists, researchers, as well as has access to cutting edge equipment and facilities to conduct frontier research. We would love to hear from you if you want to collaborate with us, to know more about our research work, or to join our research team. Thank you for taking time to reach out.

Latest News

Sep, 1

Congratulations to Prof. Sunny Leung, Prof. George Zhu, and Linh Hoang – Best Presentation Award

September 1, 2018 by Sunny Leung

Congratulations to Prof. Siu Ning (Sunny) Leung, Prof. George Zhu, and their PhD student (Linh Hoang) for winning the Best Presentation Award in the 2018 6th International Conference on Mechanical, Automotive, and Materials Engineering, which was held in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Their research in developing an industrially viable strategy to enhance the conductive […]
Read more Congratulations to Prof. Sunny Leung, Prof. George Zhu, and Linh Hoang – Best Presentation Award

Sep, 1

Congratulations to Pardis Ghahramani, Prof. Ahmed ElDyasti, and Prof. Sunny Leung – Best Paper Award Winners

September 1, 2018 by Sunny Leung

Congratulations to 2nd year Master’s student Pardis Ghahramani, Prof. Ahmed ElDyasti, and Prof. Siu Ning (Sunny) Leung for winning the Best Paper Award in the 2018 Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) ANTEC conference (Thermoplastic Materials and Foams Session), which is the largest, most respected, and well known international conference in the plastics industry. Their research […]
Read more Congratulations to Pardis Ghahramani, Prof. Ahmed ElDyasti, and Prof. Sunny Leung – Best Paper Award Winners
Sep, 1

Congratulations to Kyra McLellan & Matteo Timpano

September 1, 2018 by Sunny Leung

The third annual Undergraduate Summer Student Research Conference was a huge success. Kyra McLellan (right), who conducted a research on the development of piezoresistive polymer nanocomposites as smart sensing materials, was the winner of two top awards: (i) the 1st place and (ii) the Student’s Choice Award in oral presentation. Matteo Timpano (left), who investigated the […]
Read more Congratulations to Kyra McLellan & Matteo Timpano

Jul, 24

M3 Lab’s journal article featured on the cover of CrystCommEng (published by the Royal Society of Chemistry)

July 24, 2018 by Sunny Leung

A recent journal article published by Ji Eun Lee and Prof. Siu Ning Leung has been featured on the cover page of the CrystEngComm (RSC) in Aug 2018 (Volume 20, Page 4080-4089). This SEM micrographs on the journal’s cover page depict morphologies of piezoelectric polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) foams. This paper decouples the thermal and supercritical carbon dioxide processing of PVDF proposed in […]
Read more M3 Lab’s journal article featured on the cover of CrystCommEng (published by the Royal Society of Chemistry)
May, 20

Four bright young stars are joining M3 Lab for exciting summer research

May 20, 2018 by Sunny Leung

Hanen Chammakhi, Lucine Dayian, Kyra McLellan, and Matteo Timpano are joining M3 Lab for exciting summer research on the development of smart and multifunctional materials for energy harvesting and/or sensing applications. Hanen is currently a 3rd year student in Mechanical Engineering, Tunis University in Tunisia, is a recipient of the Mitacs Summer Research Internship. Lucine […]
Read more Four bright young stars are joining M3 Lab for exciting summer research

May, 12

Four new journal articles published by M3 Lab in April 2018

May 12, 2018 by Sunny Leung

M3 Lab has published four new journal articles that report the design and fabrication of new material systems for thermoelectric nanogenerators, development of thermally conductive polymer material systems, as well as guidelines to promote the accuracy and efficiency to simulate the electrical conductivity of polymer-CNT nano composites. These include: Guo, Y. and Leung, S.N., “Strain-Induced Oriented […]
Read more Four new journal articles published by M3 Lab in April 2018
May, 12

M3 Lab has presented three papers in 2018 Society of Plastics Engineers ANTEC Conference in Orlando

May 12, 2018 by Sunny Leung

Prof. Leung and his research team, including Jamie, Mehdi, and Pardis, have presented three papers in 2018 Society of Plastics Engineers ANTEC Conference in Orlando, FL, USA during May 6 – 11. ANTEC is one of the largest international technical conferences in the field of plastics engineering that is held annually in U.S.A. This year, the research […]
Read more M3 Lab has presented three papers in 2018 Society of Plastics Engineers ANTEC Conference in Orlando

Feb, 7

M3 Lab’s Recent Work on the Thermally Conductive TPU-hBN Composite Foams has been Accepted for Publication in Composites Part B: Engineering

February 7, 2018 by Sunny Leung

Congratulation to Parisa Ghariniyat and Prof. Sunny Leung for the publication of their recent work entitled, “Development of Thermally Conductive Thermoplastic Polyurethane Composite Foams via CO2 Foaming-Assisted Filler Networking” to be published in Composites Part B: Engineering. This work reports the uses of foaming-induced filler alignment and post-foaming elastic recovery to fabricate compliant thermally conductive thermoplastic elastomer composite foams, […]
Read more M3 Lab’s Recent Work on the Thermally Conductive TPU-hBN Composite Foams has been Accepted for Publication in Composites Part B: Engineering
Jan, 28

M3 Lab’s Recent Work on the Novel Materials for Thermal Energy Storage has been published in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

January 28, 2018 by Sunny Leung

Congratulation to Maryam Fashandi and Prof. Sunny Leung for the publication of their recent work entitled, “Sodium Acetate Trihydrate-Chitin Nanowhisker Nanocomposites with Enhanced Phase Change Performance for Thermal Energy Storage” has been published in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells. This work reports the uses of bio-derived chitin nanowhisker to effectively suppress the super-cooling of sodium acetate trihydrate (SAT). […]
Read more M3 Lab’s Recent Work on the Novel Materials for Thermal Energy Storage has been published in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

Oct, 14

M3 Lab’s Recent Work on the Development of a Novel Fabrication Strategy to Promote the Electroactive Phase of PVDF has been Published in RSC Advances

October 14, 2017 by Sunny Leung

Congratulation to Jamie Lee, Dr. Yanting Guo, Dr. Richard Lee, and Prof. Sunny Leung for the publication of their recent work entitled, “Fabrication of Electroactive Poly(vinylidene fluoride) through Non-isothermal Crystallization and Supercritical CO2 Processing” to be published in RSC Advances. This work reports the development of a novel processing strategy using a combination of non-isothermal crystallization and […]
Read more M3 Lab’s Recent Work on the Development of a Novel Fabrication Strategy to Promote the Electroactive Phase of PVDF has been Published in RSC Advances