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Professor Sang M. Han


Dr. Han is a Regents Professor in the Departments of Chemical & Biological Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico. He earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara and his B.S. in chemical engineering with honors from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Han has over 25 years of experience in electronic and photonic materials engineering and fabrication. His current research topics include:,

  • writable/rewritable quantum structures by stress patterning;
  • low-cost, crack-tolerant, advanced metallization for solar cell durability;
  • thin film processing and nanoscale surface corrugation for enhanced light trapping for photovoltaic devices; and (4) microsphere-based manufacturable coatings for radiative cooling

He has close to 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals and over 200 invited/contributed papers at academic institutions, national laboratories, and conferences. He received a UNM Junior Faculty Research Excellence Award in 2005 and an NSF Career Award in 2001. He is a recipient of STC.UNM Innovation Award consecutively from 2009 to 2018, and he was elected as the 2018 STC.UNM Innovation Fellow. Dr. Han holds 17 UNM-affiliated U.S. patents and 6 pending U.S. and PCT patent applications. He currently serves as the Chief Technical Officer of Osazda Energy LLC, a startup company based on his intellectual property generated at UNM. Prior to his entrepreneurial venture, Dr. Han served as the main campus faculty member of the STC.UNM Board of Directors from 2015 to 2016.

Recognized Patents


  • U.S. Patent 9,373,547, “Large-Scale Patterning of Germanium Quantum Dots by Stress Transfer”
  • U.S. Patent 9,530,906, “Methods to Introduce Sub-Micrometer, Symmetry-Breaking Surface Corrugation to Silicon Substrates to Increase Light Trapping”

Curriculum Vitae and Bio-sketches