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Daryl Yee

@dryeeseeks.bsky.social

1.5K followers 620 following 240 posts

Assistant Professor EPFL | Laboratory for the Chemistry of Materials and Manufacturing | 🇸🇬 | random thoughts about science,🥏, OP👒, and life in🇨🇭

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Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · Nov 16

Here's my first go at bringing together everyone who does polymers + 3D printing!

Polymer chemistry, rheology, characterization, devices, etc. All are welcome!

Let me know if you want to be added to it

#chemsky

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 4d

Woke up to an announcement saying that we’ll be landing in Bilbao shortly.

Which would have been great if I wasn’t flying to San Sebastián…

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 13d

I used to get that when I was active on Twitter. Can't win them all!

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 14d

Me too! Our technology is accessible (by research lab and chemistry standards) but not thatttt accessible. Work in progress!

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 15d

This tremendous effort was led by Yiming Ji, a PhD student in my group. Incredible persistence and great mastery of materials characterization. Truly a tour de force. The work was also supported by Ying Hong, a former postdoc, and Dhruv Bhandari, a summer intern who is now at Cornell.

Fin! (7/7)

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 15d

There's a lot more in there so do check it out! The SI is a whopping 65 pages, the bulk of which are calculations of our part densities and also that from the literature. Density is vastly underreported in our field, so we hope that this will encourage others to report it moving forward (6/7).

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 15d

To show the material, size, and geometric versatility of this technology, we made a variety of metal parts and even hard magnets! (5/7)

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 15d

Some numbers to put this in context:

Average shrinkage values today: ~80%
Average density values today: ~50%

Our work:
Shrinkage values: ~20-40%
Density values: ~90%

(4/7)

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 15d

With such high metal loadings, we were able to reduce the polymer-to-metal shrinkage while simultaneously increasing part density. These materials now significantly outperform the state of the art (including our previous work!) (3/7)

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 15d

The trick: we figured out a way to progressively grow inorganic nanoparticles within the hydrogel to achieve extremely high loading of metals (up to 80wt%). We were able to track the growth, which allowed us to obtain some beautiful images of metal dendrite growth within polymers. (Sauron!) (2/7)

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 15d

Andddd it's now out in Advanced Materials!
doi.org/10.1002/adma...

Here, we show a new method of transforming hydrogels into ceramics and metals with low conversion shrinkages and high material densities. (1/7)

#chemsky #matsky

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 16d

It's 2025, almost 2026. If you're gonna use chatgpt to write your entire research statement, at least make sure the references are not 100% fake.

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 17d

We have some new positions available in the group! (PhD student + Research intern)

Details can be found here: www.epfl.ch/labs/alchemy...

#chemsky #matsky

Laboratory Openings / Join the Group!

PhD/Postdoc Openings Update: 12/09/2025 There is one fully-funded PhD opening in the group in the area of microstructure control during vat photopolymerization or on the fundamentals of crosslinking. ...

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 21d

Oooh interesting!

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 23d

What a beautiful location!

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 24d

Sigh.

Elisha Krieg @elishakrieg.bsky.social · 24d

AI can now generate fake microscopy images that are nearly impossible to detect. A serious threat to scientific integrity—and we’re not prepared for it.

Commentary in @natnano.nature.com

#nanotechnology

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 24d

That is a big increase

marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-po...

MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 receives record number of 17,058 proposals

This year’s annual MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships call has attracted considerable interest from the research community with 17,058 proposals submitted.

marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 24d

Trying to go to more European conferences = first time in Poland in over 10 years!

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 27d

Budget cuts come for us all :(

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 28d

You can print (almost) any kind of structure!

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 29d

For sure. These are gyroids structures which are bicontinuous. You’ll see the same kind of morphologies from some phase separation

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · 29d

It took 6 months of review but this paper is finally accepted 😮‍💨🫡

It has changed / expanded so much since our first submission. Really excited to to show what we’ve done!

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · Mar 13

Just submitted the second paper of my group! Really proud of this one. Here's a teaser: we developed a process that allowed us to convert hydrogels into ceramics and metals with reduced shrinkages and improved densities!

Prev tech: Shrinkage ~60%, density ~40%
New tech: Shrinkage ~40%, density ~90%

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · Aug 30

I felt this in my soul.

Tanja Junkers @polymerreaction.bsky.social · Aug 30

Why I hate doing paper revisions.

A rant of an academic who is also a journal editor

#Chemsky #AcademicChatter #Ozchem

/1 of many

#fedup #weneedtodobetter #fixscience

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · Aug 19

Engineering: When you need to stir something that is less dense than your solvent.

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · Aug 13

Oh cool! Welcome to EPFL!

Daryl Yee @dryeeseeks.bsky.social · Aug 12

Ooh? You’re joining EPFL?