Innovation Award

Yun Liu

The Australian National University, ACT

Yun Liu is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and an Associate Professor at the Australian National University. She is eager to discover novel functional materials to solve the bottleneck problems in “high-tech” and renewable energy areas. In the past, the search for materials with colossal permittivity for use in capacitors has been met with limited success, severely limiting the further miniaturisation of electronic/electric systems and uses as energy storage devices. The invented material has an extremely high permittivity with negligible energy loss and excellent temperature stability. This breakthrough represent a new generation of high capacitance ceramic capacitors that enable further scaling in electronic/electric and energy storage devices. The discovery has opened up revolutionary opportunities in storing renewable energy and reducing electrical grid instability.

Comments from Judges

The judges have found this an outstanding innovative approach to a highly technical important problem. The long-term and far reaching potential in energy management systems is outstanding.