Electronic Engineering Department, The Chinese University of Hong Kong - Prof SUN, Xiankai 孫賢開

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Prof SUN, Xiankai 孫賢開

Professor
B.S. (USTC), M.S. & Ph.D. (Caltech), Optica Fellow
homepage Rm 225, Ho Sin Hang Engineering Building phone Tel: +852 3943 8264 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Research Interests:

Nanophotonics, Optomechanics, Optoelectronics, Photonic integrated circuits and devices, Nanofabrication
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hyperlink http://www.ee.cuhk.edu.hk/~xksun/

 

 

Resume of Career

Prof. Xiankai Sun received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from California Institute of Technology in 2010. From 2010 to 2014, he was a Postdoctoral Associate and then an Associate Research Scientist in Department of Electrical Engineering at Yale University. Since 2014, he has been with The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he is currently a Professor of Electronic Engineering and an Associate Director for Center of Optical Sciences. He is an expert on chip-scale integrated photonic, electronic, and mechanical devices and systems. His current research focuses on novel photonic and optomechanical nanodevices for both fundamental research and practical applications.

Prof. Sun has published 117 peer-reviewed journal papers, 82 conference papers, 3 book chapters, and 1 book with a total citation of 4358 and the h-index of 38 (Google Scholar). He is currently an Associate Editor for Optica and Journal of Lightwave Technology and an Editorial Board Member for Advanced Photonics Nexus. He was a session organizer/chair/co-chair at the conferences PIERS 2016, 2021, IMCO 2018, 2019, and OGC 2022, and a technical committee member at the conferences ACP 2018, 2020, ICOCN 2019, CLEO 2020-2022, AOPC 2021, MWP 2023, CLEO-PR 2024, and WOMBAT. He was an evaluator for judging the research and professional activities of the Institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He was also an external reviewer of grant proposals for the Israel Science Foundation, the French National Research Agency, and the European Research Council. Prof. Sun was honored as a finalist of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists by New York Academy of Sciences in 2013 for his contribution to “experimental research of nanoscale optomechanical systems.” He also received the Early Career Award 2015/16 and Research Fellow Scheme (RFS) Award 2023/24 from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong and the Young Researcher Award 2022/23 from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is an Optica Fellow.

Current Research Interests

Nanophotonics, Optomechanics, Optoelectronics, Photonic integrated circuits and devices, Nanofabrication

Highlights of Recent Research Achievements

  • First demonstration of a Si/InGaAsP hybrid laser
  • Demonstration of world’s smallest optomechanical systems
  • Proposal of a hybrid graphene/silicon integrated optical isolator (selected as one of the world's 30 most clearly communicated breakthroughs in optics in 2016)
  • Invention of etchless photonic integrated circuits with bound states in the continuum
  • Discovery of auxiliary orbital degree of freedom in nanomechanical topological insulators
  • Realization of room-temperature continuous-wave topological Dirac-vortex microcavity lasers on silicon

Taught Courses

  • ENGG1100: Introduction to Engineering Design
  • ENGG1310, ESTR1003, ESTR2006: Engineering Physics
  • ENGG2720: Complex Variables for Engineers
  • BMEG4410: BioMEMS
  • ELEG5550: Micro- and Nano-Fabrication Laboratory

Honors and Awards

  • Optica Fellow (2025)
  • RGC Research Fellow, Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (2023)
  • Young Researcher Award, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (2023)
  • Early Career Award, Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (2015)
  • Finalist, Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, New York Academy of Sciences (2013)

External Service in Recent 3 Years

  • Associate Editor of Optica (2022–present)
  • Associate Editor of Journal of Lightwave Technology (2021–present)
  • Editorial Board Member of Advanced Photonics Nexus (01/2025–present)
  • Editorial Board Member of Optical and Quantum Electronics (2022–2024)
  • Guest Editor of Optical Materials Express for Feature Issue on Optomechanical Photonics (2023–2024)
  • Lead Guest Editor of Journal of the Optical Society of America B (2022–2023)
  • Associate Editor of Optics Express (2016–2022)
  • Editorial Board Member of Scientific Reports (2018–2022)
  • Session co-chair of Topic 6: Silicon Photonics for Large-Scale Integration at the 16th International Conference on Information Optics and Photonics (CIOP 2025), Xi’an, China, 08/2025
  • Member of the technical program committee of the topical meeting of Optoelectronic Devices and Integration at the 16th International Photonics and OptoElectronics Meetings (POEM 2025), Wuhan, China, 05/2025
  • Technical committee member of C11: Semiconductor and Integrated Photonic Devices at the 16th Pacific Rim Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO-PR 2024), Incheon, Korea, 08/2024
  • Program committee member of the Lithium Niobate Photonics Conference (LiNC 2023), Hong Kong, 12/2023
  • Technical committee member of the 2023 IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP 2023), Nanjing, China, 10/2023
  • Steering committee member of Workshop on Optomechanics and Brillouin Scattering (WOMBAT), 2022–present
  • Symposium chair for S6: Optoelectronic Devices and Applications at 2022 IEEE the 7th Optoelectronics Global Conference (OGC 2022), Shenzhen, China, 09/2022
  • Technical committee member of S&I 9: Photonic Integration in the 2022 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO 2022), San Jose, CA, USA, 05/2022
  • External examiner of PhD thesis for The University of Hong Kong (2023), City University of Hong Kong (2024)
  • External assessor for Incubation Programs of the Hong Kong Science Technology Parks Corporation (2022–2025)
  • External reviewer of graduate courses for The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (2021, 2022, 2024, 2025)
  • External examiner of MPhil and PhD theses for The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (2022)
  • External reviewer of grant proposals for the Israel Science Foundation (2021, 2023)
  • Invited journal reviewer for Nature, Nature Photonics, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Physics, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Advanced Materials, Light: Science & Applications, PhotoniX, Physical Review Letters, Laser & Photonics Reviews, ACS Nano, Nano Letters, Advanced Functional Materials, Advanced Optical Materials, npj Nanophotonics, Nanophotonics, ACS Photonics, APL Photonics, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, Journal of Lightwave Technology, Optics and Laser Technology, Optics Letters, Optics Express, Journal of the Optical Society of America B, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, IEEE Photonics Journal, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, Physical Review Applied, Physical Review A, Physical Review B, Applied Physics Reviews, Applied Physics Letters, Journal of Applied Physics, etc.

Publications for the Past 3 Years

117 refereed journal papers, 82 refereed conference papers, 20 invited conference talks, 1 book, 3 book chapters, total citations: 4358, h-index: 38 (Google Scholar, as of Apr. 2025). For a complete list of publications, please visit my Google Scholar profile at http://scholar.google.com.hk/citations?user=Z8CHWjsAAAAJ&hl=en.

  1. Jianfeng He and Xiankai Sun, “Highly efficient intramodal and intermodal acousto-optic modulation on an etchless lithium niobate integrated platform,” Laser & Photonics Reviews, 2025. (accepted)
  2. Jianfeng He, Xinyi Zhao, Jian-Bin Xu, and Xiankai Sun, “Lithium tantalate microring cavities with Q factor exceeding 10 million,” Photonics Research, 2025. (accepted)
  3. Yuan Li, Zhen Zhang, Juncheng Gong, Xuewen Shu*, and Xiankai Sun*, “Photonic Floquet–Bloch oscillations dominated by Floquet gauge,” Laser & Photonics Reviews, 2025. (accepted)
  4. Xuetong Zhou, Ying Xue, Fan Ye, Ziyao Feng, Jianfeng He, Xiankai Sun, Kei May Lau, and Hon Ki Tsang, “Fully etched low-back-reflection and high-efficiency silicon waveguide grating couplers with a minimum feature size of 260 nm,” Journal of Lightwave Technology 43 (8): 3854–3859, Apr. 2025.
  5. Xuetong Zhou, Ying Xue, Hanke Feng, Jianfeng He, Xiankai Sun, Cheng Wang, Kei May Lau, and Hon Ki Tsang, “Waveguide grating couplers with bandwidth beyond 200 nm,” Nanophotonics 14 (5): 571–579, Mar. 2025.
  6. Zhenlin Zhao, Ruiji Dong, Ya Hu, Tianhe Wu, Ziyao Feng, Zheng Huang, Ming Li, Chang-Ling Zou, Xiankai Sun, and Qijing Lu, “Broadband near-visible frequency comb generation via high-order mode dispersion engineering in a microbubble resonator,” Journal of Lightwave Technology 43 (5): 2226–2231, Mar. 2025.
  7. Zhenlin Zhao, Ruiji Dong, Ya Hu, Ming Li, Juanjuan Lu, Ziyao Feng, Xiankai Sun, Chang-Ling Zou, and Qijing Lu, “Dispersion engineering for broadband visible microcombs via mode hybridization and inverse design,” Optics Letters 50 (5): 1751–1754, Mar. 2025.
  8. Yihao Luo and Xiankai Sun, “Topological bound states in the continuum in a non-Hermitian photonic system,” Nanophotonics 14 (1): 43–50, Jan. 2025. [featured as cover article]
  9. Long Jin, Xuezhou Wang, Li Zeng, Ziyao Feng, Ni Zhao, and Xiankai Sun, “Etchless Dion–Jacobson-phase perovskite surface-emitting circular Bragg lasers with an ultrahigh Q factor,” ACS Photonics 12 (1): 53–61, Jan. 2025. [featured as cover article]
  10. V. A. Saroka, F. Kong, L. Bogani, C. A. Downing, R. B. Payod, F. R. Fischer, and Xiankai Sun, “Flat band, tunable chiral anomaly, and pitchfork bifurcation in a honeycomb lattice,” Physical Review B 110 (19): 195134, Nov. 2024.
  11. Keyi Zhong, Yaojing Zhang, Shuangyou Zhang, Yuanfei Zhang, Yuan Li, Yue Qin, Yi Wang, Jose M. Chavez Boggio, Xiankai Sun, Chester Shu, Pascal Del’Haye, and Hon Ki Tsang, “Near-infrared dual-band frequency comb generation from a silicon resonator,” Laser & Photonics Reviews, 2301366, Nov. 2024.
  12. Kejie Fang, Xiankai Sun, Avi Zadok, and Mohammad Mirhosseini, “Optomechanical Photonics: feature issue introduction,” Optical Materials Express 14 (11): 2755–2756, Nov. 2024.
  13. Xiang Xi, Jingwen Ma, and Xiankai Sun, “A topological parametric phonon oscillator,” Advanced Materials 37 (2): 2309015, Jan. 2025. [included in Special Issue: 60th Anniversary of The Chinese University of Hong Kong]
  14. Qijing Lu, Ziyao Feng, and Xiankai Sun, “Symmetry-protected bound states in the continuum on an integrated photonic platform,” Nanophotonics 13 (18): 3527–3534, Aug. 2024.
  15. Fan Ye, Yue Qin, Chenfei Cui, Xiankai Sun, and Hon Ki Tsang, “Integrated bound-state-in-the-continuum photon-pair source,” Photonics Research 12 (6): 1322–1327, Jun. 2024.
  16. Zhen Zhang, Yuan Li, Xiankai Sun, and Xuewen Shu, “Visual observation of photonic Floquet–Bloch oscillations,” Light: Science & Applications 13: 99, Apr. 2024.
  17. Yue Yu and Xiankai Sun, “Surface acoustic microwave photonic filters on etchless lithium niobate integrated platform,” Laser & Photonics Review 18, 2300385, Apr. 2024.
  18. Zhen Zhang, Yuan Li, Changhong Chen, Qi Yu, Xiankai Sun, and Xuewen Shu, “Polychromatic photonic Floquet–Bloch oscillations,” Optics Express 32 (6): 10703-10714, Mar. 2024.
  19. Yu Wang, Zhi-Peng Shi, Hong-Yi Kuang, Xiang Xi, Shuai Wan, Zhen Shen, Pi-Yu Wang, Guan-Ting Xu, Xiankai Sun, Chang-Ling Zou, Guang-Can Guo, and Chun-Hua Dong, “Realization of quantum ground state in an optomechanical crystal cavity,” Science China Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy 66 (12): 124213, Dec. 2023.
  20. Xuezhou Wang, Long Jin, Aleksandr Sergeev, Wei Liu, Songyun Gu, Nan Li, Kezhou Fan, Shih-Chi Chen, Kam Sing Wong, Xiankai Sun, and Ni Zhao, “Quasi-2D Dion-Jacobson phase perovskites as a promising material platform for stable and high-performance lasers,” Science Advances 9 (43): eadj3476, Oct. 2023.
  21. Jingwen Ma, Taojie Zhou, Mingchu Tang, Haochuan Li, Zhan Zhang, Xiang Xi, Mickael Martin, Thierry Baron, Huiyun Liu, Zhaoyu Zhang, Siming Chen, and Xiankai Sun, “Room-temperature continuous-wave topological Dirac-vortex microcavity lasers on silicon,” Light: Science & Applications 12: 255, Oct. 2023.
  22. Yue Yu and Xiankai Sun, “Etchless photonic integrated circuits enabled by bound states in the continuum: tutorial,” Journal of the Optical Society of America B 40 (11): 2801–2808, Nov. 2023. [invited]
  23. Zejie Yu, He Gao, Yi Wang, Yue Yu, Hon Ki Tsang, Xiankai Sun, and Daoxin Dai, “Fundamentals and applications of photonic waveguides with bound states in the continuum,” Journal of Semiconductors 44 (10): 101301, Oct. 2023.
  24. Ziyao Feng, Yang Liu, Xiang Xi, Lai Wang, and Xiankai Sun, “Gigahertz phononic integrated circuits based on overlay slot waveguides,” Physical Review Applied 19 (6): 064076, Jun. 2023.
  25. Xuetong Zhou, Ying Xue, Fan Ye, Ziyao Feng, Yuan Li, Xiankai Sun, Kei May Lau, and Hon Ki Tsang, “High coupling efficiency waveguide grating couplers on lithium niobate,” Optics Letters 48 (12): 3267–3270, Jun. 2023.
  26. Ziyao Feng and Xiankai Sun, “Experimental observation of dissipatively coupled bound states in the continuum on an integrated photonic platform,” Laser & Photonics Reviews 17 (7): 2200961, Jul. 2023.
  27. Xiankai Sun, Zejie Yu, Mengjie Yu, and Hong X. Tang, “Integrated lithium niobate photonics: introduction,” Journal of the Optical Society of America B 40 (5): ILN1–ILN2, May 2023.
  28. Xiao-Jing Liu, Yue Yu, Di Liu, Qi-Long Cui, Xiaozhuo Qi, Yang Chen, Guangyuan Qu, Li Song, Guo-Ping Guo, Guang-Can Guo, Xiankai Sun, and Xi-Feng Ren, “Coupling of photon emitters in monolayer WS2 with a photonic waveguide based on bound states in the continuum,” Nano Letters 23 (8): 3209–3216, Apr. 2023.
  29. Mingzeng Peng, Jiadong Cheng, Xinhe Zheng, Jingwen Ma, Ziyao Feng, and Xiankai Sun, “2D-materials-integrated optoelectromechanics: recent progress and future perspectives,” Reports on Progress in Physics 86 (2): 026402, Feb. 2023.
  30. Yuan Li, Zunyue Zhang, Yi Wang, Yue Yu, Xuetong Zhou, Hon Ki Tsang, and Xiankai Sun, “Inverse-designed linear coherent photonic networks for high-resolution spectral reconstruction,” ACS Photonics 10 (4): 1012–1018, Apr. 2023. [featured as cover article]
    [included in Special Issue on Optimized Photonics and Inverse Design]
  31. Ziyao Feng and Xiankai Sun, “Harnessing dynamical encircling of an exceptional point in anti-PT-symmetric integrated photonic systems,” Physical Review Letters 129 (27): 273601, Dec. 2022.
  32. Taojie Zhou, Jingwen Ma, Mingchu Tang, Haochuan Li, Mickael Martin, Thierry Baron, Huiyun Liu, Siming Chen, Xiankai Sun, and Zhaoyu Zhang, “Monolithically integrated ultralow threshold topological corner state nanolasers on silicon,” ACS Photonics 9 (12): 3824–3830, Dec. 2022.
  33. Jiawei Zhang, Ziyao Feng, and Xiankai Sun, “Realization of bound states in the continuum in anti-PT-symmetric optical systems: a proposal and analysis,” Laser & Photonics Reviews 17 (1): 2200079, Jan. 2023.
  34. Yue Yu, Xiang Xi, and Xiankai Sun, “Observation of mechanical bound states in the continuum in an optomechanical microresonator,” Light: Science & Applications 11: 328, Nov. 2022.
  35. Xiang Xi, Chang-Ling Zou, Chun-Hua Dong, and Xiankai Sun, “Highly tunable broadband coherent wavelength conversion with a fiber-based optomechanical system,” Advanced Photonics 4 (5): 056003, Sep. 2022. [featured as cover article]
  36. Yue Yu, Zejie Yu, Zunyue Zhang, Hon Ki Tsang, and Xiankai Sun, “Wavelength-division multiplexing on an etchless lithium niobate integrated platform,” ACS Photonics 9 (10): 3253–3259, Oct. 2022.
  37. Huade Mao, Yue Yu, Yu-Xuan Ren, Ka Yan Chan, Jiqiang Kang, Xiankai Sun, Edmund Y. Lam, and Kenneth K. Y. Wong, “Neural optimizer for inverse design of complex-modulated hologram implemented by plasmonic metasurfaces,” Advanced Photonics Research 4 (1): 2200085, Jan. 2023.
  38. Fan Ye and Xiankai Sun, “Hofstadter butterfly and topological edge states in a quasiperiodic photonic crystal cavity array,” Optics Express 30 (15): 26620–26627, Jul. 2022.
  39. Xudong Liu, Jialiang Huang, Hao Chen, Zhengfang Qian, Jingwen Ma, Xiankai Sun, Shuting Fan, and Yiwen Sun, "Terahertz topological photonic waveguide switch for on-chip communication," Photonics Research 10 (4): 1090–1096, Apr. 2022.
  40. Fan Ye, Yue Yu, Xiang Xi, and Xiankai Sun, "Second-harmonic generation in etchless lithium niobate nanophotonic waveguides with bound states in the continuum," Laser & Photonics Reviews 16 (3): 2100429, Mar. 2022.
  41. Yuan Li and Xiankai Sun, "Anisotropic Dirac cone and slow edge states in a photonic Floquet lattice," Physical Review B 105 (1): 014306, Jan. 2022.
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