The center for information photonics and energy materials, founded in 2008, focuses on the growth of high performance optoelectronic thin film materials and the fabrication of photovoltaic energy conversion devices, energy storage devices, sensors and imaging device. Research topics of the group includes but not limited to (1) CIGS, CZTS thin film photovoltaic devices,（2） visible and near infrared broad band photo-detector, (3) X ray flat panel detector, (4) solid state lithium ion battery,(5) IGZO thin film transistor,(6) scanning probe microscopic characterization, （7）perovskite nanostructures, (8) barrier film for oxygen and moisture, (9) intelligent force and chemical sensors.

As of 2016, the group has been successfully awarded with 75 national and regional research projects with a total funding amount of more than 70 million RMB, including a 973 projects (28M RMB) from the Ministry of science and technology and a major equipment project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Using "three-stage" evaporation, the group has successfully fabricated CIGS with efficiency of 21.3% which is the first lab result who achieved 20%+ efficiency for thin film solar cell in China. The device performance is very close to that of the champion devices of efficiency above 22% made by ZSW and solar frontier. A CIGS pilot line of 40cmX60cm panel size has been designed and built using patented process and self-developed equipment, actively pushing the research achievements to commercialization. For the earth abundant CZTS solar cells, the team has revealed the detrimental effect from potential fluctuation of the band structure and developed a novel process to suppress the potential fluctuation which leads a CZTS solar cell efficiency improvement to 12.3%.