Researchers Make New Electronics – With A Twist

PNAS 105, 18675 (2008) 

Dae-Hyeong Kim et al from Prof. Rogers’ group (University of Illinois), Prof. Jizhou Song (University of Miami), Prof. Yonggang Huang (Northwestern University), and their collaborators at IHPC in Singapore and Tsinghua University just published a paper as the featured cover article in PNAS.   

Electronic systems that offer elastic mechanical response to high strain deformations are of growing interest because of their ability to enable new biomedical devices and other applications.  Several promising approaches exist ranging from the use of coplanar stretchable interconnects between rigid amorphous silicon devices to wavy layouts in single crystalline silicon CMOD circuits, both on elastomeric substrate, to net shaped structures in organic electronics on plastic sheets.  None offers the combination of electronic performance (high electron and hole mobility), scalability (with relatively modest modifications to conventional microelectronics technologies), integrated circuit applicability in complementary designs and mechanical properties required of some of the most demanding, and most interesting systems.  This paper exploited semiconductor nanomaterials and introduced new mechanical design strategy (i.e., non-coplanar mesh design) to fabricate electronic circuits that offer extremely high stretchability (as much as 140%) and allows the user to subject circuits to any complex deformation such as diagonal stretching, bending and twisting. This emerging technology promises new flexible sensors, new photovoltaic and microfluidic devices, and other applications for medical and athletic use. 

D. H. Kim, J. Song, W. M. Choi, H. S. Kim, R. H. Kim, Z. J. Liu, Y. Huang, K. C. Hwang, Y. Zhang and J. A. Rogers, 2008.  Materials and Noncoplanar Mesh Designs for Integrated Circuits with Linear Elastic Responses to Extreme Mechanical Deformations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, 18675-18680. 

The full paper could be found at: http://www.pnas.org/content/105/48/18675.abstract