Xiao Wei Sun (Chinese:孙小卫) is an academic, serving as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering as well as the Executive Dean of the Institute of Nanoscience and Applications at Southern University of Science and Technology.
With over 40000 citations and an h-index of 102, Sun has authored over 700 publications. His work has been published in leading academic journals, including "Applied Physics Letters", "Journal of Applied Physics", "Advanced Materials", "Nano Letters", "Physical Review Letters", "Nature Nanotechnology", "Nature Communications" etc. Moreover, he is the recipient of the SPIE DCS 2024 Fumio Okano Best Paper Prize, and the 2023 SID Slottow-Owaki Prize.
Sun is an Honorary Doctorate from Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Optica (formerly Optical Society of America (OSA)), the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), the Society for Information Display (SID, the first mainland Chinese fellow), and the Institute of Physics (IoP) in UK. He has also been honored as a Distinguished Lecturer by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He established the Society for Energy Photonics in Singapore, a non-profitable organization promoting photonic solutions to combat global warming and climate change. He also co-founded the Singapore-China Association for Advancement of Science and Technology (SCAAST), serving as the founding Vice Chairman. Additionally, he directed the Key Laboratory of Energy Conversion and Storage Technology under the Ministry of Education and the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Quantum Dot Advanced Display and Lighting.
Education.
Sun earned a B.S. in Optoelectronics from Tianjin University in 1990, followed by an M.S. in Optical Engineering in 1992 from the same institution. He obtained his Ph.D. in Optical Engineering from Tianjin University in 1994 and a second Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 1998.
Career.
Sun began his academic career at Nanyang Technological University, where he served as an Assistant Professor from 1998 to 2005, followed by a tenured position as an Associate Professor from 2005 to 2011. He was appointed as a Full Professor in the School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering from 2011 to 2015. Simultaneously, he was invited to establish the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Southern University of Science and Technology (established in 2012 by Shenzhen Government). In 2015, he left Singapore and joined the Southern University of Science and Technology as a Distinguished Professor, serving as the acting Dean of the new College of Engineering for a year, and the founding head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. He continued in that role till 2020. Between 2020 and 2021, he served as Acting Director at the Technology Transfer Office. Since 2022, he has served as the Executive Dean of the Institute of Nanoscience and Applications at Southern University of Science and Technology. 
Since returning to China, Sun has led multiple national, provincial, and municipal research projects on the industrial applications of quantum dots and 3D displays. He founded the Guangdong Microdisplay Industry Alliance, organized 16 international conferences, and established two startups in the display industry. One startup, Shenzhen Planck Innovations Pte Ltd, focuses on quantum dot films, while the other, Shenzhen Sitan Technologies Pte Ltd, specializes in micro-LED technologies. Sun also established the Society for Energy Photonics and co-founded the Singapore-China Association for Science and Technology Promotion.
Research.
In his early research, Sun investigated the epitaxial growth, photoluminescent properties, and refractive index dispersion of ZnO thin films on sapphire substrates, grown via pulsed laser deposition, to explore their optical and excitonic properties for device applications. His 2005 study examined the impact of growth temperature and annealing on ZnO thin films, identifying temperature-driven optical band gap shifts and consistent photoluminescence from crystalline nanodomains embedded within an amorphous structure. Subsequently, in a 2006 paper, he pioneered ZnO nanocombs for a glucose biosensor, examining their effectiveness as GOx supports, and evaluating sensitivity, affinity, and detection limits, highlighting their potential in high-performance biochemical sensing applications.
Sun authored another paper in 2006. Investigating hydrothermally synthesized, vertically aligned ZnO nanorod arrays for gas sensing, this study demonstrated their high sensitivity and low-cost potential in detecting H₂, NH₃, and CO at various temperatures, with optimal performance at 250 °C. He adopted a systematic approach to develop ZnO nanorod based electrically driven homojunction and heterojunction light-emitting diodes and laser diodes. He identified single crystal ZnO nanorods (less defects) as an ideal platform for realizing p-type ZnO. He applied As ion implantation to convert the top-part of ZnO nanorods into p-type, forming a homojunction diode along the rods. He also designed the first ZnO whispering-gallery-mode lasing from an electrically driven ZnO microrod and p-type GaN heterojunction. He also pioneered the ZnO nanorod and organic semiconductor heterojunction light-emitting diodes. Furthermore, to make ZnO useful in field emission display applications, he designed the pin-shaped ZnO nanorod, and electronically engineered Fermi level by doping.
Since returning to China, Sun has led multiple national, provincial, and municipal research projects in industrial applications of quantum dot films, Micro-LEDs and 3D displays. His 2017 study discussed the synthesis and characterization of mixed-cation perovskite nanocrystals (FA(1−x)CsxPbBr3), highlighting a new route in high-performance LEDs, where optimized compositions significantly enhanced luminance and efficiency. In 2021, he introduced a selective electrophoretic deposition technique for high-resolution, large-area patterning of colloidal quantum dots, enhancing efficiency and manufacturing scalability for next-generation displays, particularly quantum dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs). In another study published the same year, he presented advancements in inkjet-printed quantum dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs) through a ternary ink system and gradient vacuum post-treatment, achieving atomic smooth films with greatly enhanced stability and efficiency. More recently in 2023, he investigated the efficiency behavior of QLEDs with ZnMgO and ZnO electron transport layers, highlighting that ZnMgO devices experience efficiency drops due to hole leakage, while ZnO devices show efficiency increases due to reduced electron leakage. Moreover, in 2024, he showed that the photon recycling and microcavity strategies for enhancing the outcoupling in PeLED and QLED are competing. This study revealed that the ray optics limit of outcoupling could be surpassed with microcavity effect, and the high efficiency puzzle in the literature could be explained.
Patents.
Sun holds patents to several important inventions. His research on quantum dot (QD) passivation led to patented technologies enabling cost-effective QD enhancement films for LCD backlights. These patents were then transferred to Planck Innovation Pte Ltd, contributing to mass production and commercial adoption by major display companies like TCL. He also developed a split drain magnetic field effect transistor (MAGFET) with supplemental gates that create a lateral electric field, enhancing its capability to detect and determine the orientation of external magnetic fields. 
Sun developed a hybrid vacuum and solution-processing method for perovskite thin films, achieving uniform, high-quality films with large grains, enhancing solar cell efficiency, scalability, and stability, and reducing issues like aggregation and recombination. He also created a backlight module featuring multilayer light-emitting regions, an optimized light-exiting layer, and an integrated driving module, enhancing light distribution, color accuracy, and control for improved display performance in electronic devices. Additionally, he also collaboratively developed a method for producing a fluorescent polarizing film using inkjet printing to directionally arrange quantum rods, allowing adjustable properties on flexible substrates, suitable for diverse applications in optical technologies.
Awards and honors.
Sun has received several notable awards and honors throughout his career, reflecting recognition of his contributions to science and technology. In 2009, he was named a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and received the NTU Technology and Innovation Award. The following year, in 2010, he was elected as a Fellow of SPIE, and in 2011, he was further recognized as a Fellow of SID. His achievements continued in 2013 when he was honored with the Jacques Beaulieu Distinguished Research Chair Award by the National Institute for Scientific Research and was also inducted as an Academician of the Asia-Pacific Academy of Materials. Subsequently, in 2016, he was elected a Fellow of Optica (formerly OSA), followed by his selection as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer in 2018. In 2021, his work was further acknowledged with an Honorary Doctorate from the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics (BSUIR). More recently, in 2023, he received the SID Slottow-Owaki Prize and in 2024, he was awarded the SPIE DCS Fumio Okano Best 3D Paper Prize. Most recently in 2024, he was elected as a fellow of IEEE with citation of “For contributions to optoelectronic materials and devices”.