IOP is the leading research institute in China in condensed matter physics and related fields. Through more than 90 years of development, IOP has become a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary research organization engaged in research on basic and applied physics. Its current research activities concentrate on condensed matter physics, optical physics, atomic and molecular physics, plasma physics, soft matter physics, and condensed matter theory and computation physics. There are 12 laboratories and 8 centers in our research system together with a strong technical support system. In 2017, IOP was officially designated by the Ministry of Science and Technology as the Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics. More Information about IOP can be found at www.iop.cas.cn.

IOP has made many breakthroughs in basic research, e.g., "scaling of the strange-metal scattering in unconventional superconductors", "Roton pair density wave in a strong-coupling kagome superconductor", the discoveries of “Weyl fermions in condensed matter", "superconductivity in CrAs and MnP", "Nearly quantized conductance plateau of vortex zero mode in an iron-based superconductor", "Rational design of layered oxide materials for sodium-ion batteries", "evidence for Majorana bound states in an iron-based superconductor", and “a new class of magnetic Skyrmion materials"; "catalogue of topological electronic materials", "Atomically precise, custom-design origami graphene nanostructures", "Observation of unconventional chiral fermions with long Fermi arcs in CoSi", “high-temperature bulk metallic glasses developed by combinatorial methods”, and "growth of low-dimensional materials". It plays a leading role in many areas, such as superconductors, topological materials, magnetism, condensed matter theory and computation, nanomaterials, 2D Materials, quantum computation, theoretical research of integrable models, plasmonics, carbon nanotubes, metallic plastic materials, soft matter/biophysics, and advanced materials, etc.

IOP also does well in applied physics. It has been granted 1400+ patents since 1998. Some of these patents have been successfully commercialized, with the most successful examples being the lithium ion battery, the LED-related techniques, and a core composite film for magnetic/nonmagnetic/magnetic multilayer thin films and its usage.

Since 1978, IOP researchers have won 490+ awards, including 8 physics awards of the Third World Academy of Sciences, 1 National Top Award for Science and Technology, 34 National Awards for Natural Sciences, 24 National Awards for Science and Technology Progress, and 9 National Awards for Technological Inventions.

IOP has also undertaken or participated in the construction of some large-scale scientific facilities, such as the Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility, two interdisciplinary research centers of Center for Clean Energy and Center for Materials Genome Initiative, in HuaiRou Science City, Beijing, the China Spallation Neutron Source in DongGuan, Guangdong Province, and the Dream Line - Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Shanghai.

Apart from the current ZhongGuanCun campus, which is focusing on basic research, IOP has now opened a new campus in HuaiRou Science City, suburban Beijing, to develop the large scientific facility and two interdisciplinary research centers.