It’s not sci-fi but Kingkiller Cronicles is some of the first fantasy I tried and it was excellent. It gets sciency enough to keep me interested. Ideas from chemistry, thermodynamics, physics are prominent in this magical world. But the reason I recommended this series is because it is well written, exceptionally engaging, and the reader is awesome once you get used to his voice.
For scifi I recommend Three Body Problem (lots of cool ideas based in physics and an excellent story) or Expeditionary Force (Lots of AI/programming humor and space travel scenarios).
His ideas on magic were awesome. I liked the binding system as well. I recently read R. F. Kuang’s book Babel. She has a different take on “binding” using similarities of meanings and multiple meanings of words from different languages. It was a very neat book, though it was reminiscent of the magic in the realm of Temerant. I recommend it.