The Anhui Provincial Engineering Center for Advanced Functional Polymer Films, guided by the vision of “The Film-Creating Windows for the World,” is built upon the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Glass, and the State Key Laboratory of Precision and Intelligent Chemistry. It collaborates closely with teams from the School of Nuclear Science and Technology, the School of Chemistry and Materials Science, the National Research Center for Microscale Material Science, the Institute of Carbon Neutrality, and the Institute of Advanced Technology at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). The center has established four key divisions: Materials Synthesis, Film Processing, Film Coating Research, and Film Product Development, focusing on four core missions: Innovative Talent Development, R&D Platform Construction, Development of Integrated Technologies, and Innovation in R&D Organization.

Innovative Talent Development:The center explores an innovative talent development model that deeply integrates industry, education, and research. Guided by industrial demand and linked through projects, it uses university-industry joint laboratories as platforms. Product-related challenges are distilled into technical problems, and technical problems further refined into scientific questions, which in turn shape graduate thesis topics. Through the implementation of the “One Student, One Enterprise” training model, students and faculty jointly conduct research on the front lines of industry, fostering innovation talent by addressing real-world challenges.

R&D Platform Construction:Aiming at innovation in the polymer film industry, the center develops in-situ research platform technologies based on major scientific facilities such as synchrotron radiation, neutron sources, and solid-state NMR, enabling precise and efficient R&D across the full lifecycle of film processing and application (“seeing clearly”). It also advances high-throughput synthesis, processing, structural-performance characterization, and multiscale computer simulation methods, integrating machine learning to explore AI-driven innovation paradigms rooted in physical and chemical principles. A comprehensive R&D platform spanning laboratory, pilot, and application validation stages is being established to continuously support fundamental research, industrial innovation, and talent development in polymer films.

Development of Integrated Technologies:Leveraging the in-situ research platforms based on major scientific facilities and AI-driven innovation paradigms grounded in physical and chemical principles, the center collaborates with upstream and downstream enterprises along the polymer film industry chain. It investigates fundamental scientific and engineering challenges in raw material synthesis, film processing, equipment design, and downstream applications. By bridging basic research, pilot-scale testing, and mass production, the center delivers complete film processing technologies and engineering solutions, with results transferred in accordance with the USTC’s Technology Achievement Implementation Management Measures.

Innovation in R&D Organization:The center builds university-industry joint laboratories, new research institutes, and co-development projects in partnership with enterprises, which contribute real-world problems, funding, and outstanding personnel. It forms structured and organized collaborative teams that deeply integrate academia and industry, jointly establishing enterprise central research institutes and technology centers. These teams conduct product-oriented basic research and product development. By facilitating the transformation of innovative talent, the center promotes the transfer of scientific and technological achievements. Through a “talent transplantation with local adaptation” model, it delivers innovation capacity to help enterprises become the primary drivers of technological innovation.