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Her innovative technique to enhance organic electronic devices could make medical implants significantly more compatible with the human body and considerably less invasive. This technology could also pave the way for new early-diagnosis tools for a wide range of diseases.

Sun's groundbreaking research recently won her a $75,000 prize. "They called my name. I thought they got the wrong person. I was like, is there another Grace up here?" Sun shared with Business Insider at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) awards ceremony. The young scientist was in disbelief, considering the high caliber of her competitors.

Sun's research focuses on organic electrochemical transistors, or OECTs. "They have performance issues right now," she explained. "They have instability in the body. You don't want some sort of implanted bioelectronic to degrade in your body." However, OECTs have immense potential. Unlike silicon-based devices, OECTs are soft and flexible, making them more suitable for heart and brain implants.

"They're so much more accurate, their speed is higher, their performance is higher because they consider signals in the body that previous electronics haven't considered. They're also safe because they're made of organic materials," Sun added. She hopes that her work in enhancing their performance will be a stepping stone to their commercialization and widespread use in the next two decades.

May 18, 2024

ISEF, run by the Society for Science, is the world's largest pre-college STEM competition. This year, the event awarded $9 million in prizes, its largest purse yet. Sun took home the top prize, the $75,000 George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award. "This was our number one project, without a shadow of a doubt," said Ian Jandrell, a judging co-chair for the materials science category at ISEF, about Sun's research.

Sun's research, which she has been working on for over six months, involved "doping" the OECTs with a series of organic salts. She discovered that one salt, tetrabutylammonium chloride, significantly improved the device's amplification abilities, sensitivity, signal-to-noise ratio, and switching speed. These improvements could help create biomedical devices capable of detecting early signs of disease in the body's biochemical makeup.

Sun's tested salt improved amplification performance by 97% and switching speed by 77%. "These are significant numbers," Jandrell noted. Sensitive OECTs could detect proteins or nucleic acids associated with disease long before traditional symptoms appear. Sun envisions OECTs embedded in clothing to monitor sweat or used to accurately test blood-alcohol levels before driving.

In the future, OECTs could lead to new technologies that replace invasive implants like pacemakers. As for Sun, she sees a future for herself in chemical engineering to help improve medicine. "Hopefully I can make some sort of commercializable breakthrough, like what I'm trying to do now with these devices," Sun said. "If possible, I do want to start a business so that I can get them into the real world in industries to impact more people directly."