Foldable and stretchable, silicon circuits conform to many shapes

Achieving high degrees of mechanical flexibility, or foldability, is important to sustaining the wavy shapes, Rogers said. “The more robust the circuits are under bending, the more easily they will adopt the wavy shapes which, in turn, allow overall system stretchability. For this purpose, we use ultrathin circuit sheets designed to locate the most fragile materials in a neutral plane that minimizes their exposure to mechanical strains during bending.”

To create their fully stretchable integrated circuits, the researchers begin by applying a sacrificial layer of polymer to a rigid carrier substrate. On top of the sacrificial layer they deposit a very thin plastic coating, which will support the integrated circuit. The circuit components are then crafted using conventional techniques for planar device fabrication, along with printing methods for integrating aligned arrays of nanoribbons of single-crystal silicon as the semiconductor. The combined thickness of the circuit elements and the plastic coating is about 50 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

Next, the sacrificial polymer layer is washed away, and the plastic coating and integrated circuit are bonded to a piece of prestrained silicone rubber. Lastly, the strain is relieved, and as the rubber springs back to its initial shape, it applies compressive stresses to the circuit sheet. Those stresses spontaneously lead to a complex pattern of buckling, to create a geometry that then allows the circuit to be folded, or stretched, in different directions to conform to a variety of complex shapes or to accommodate mechanical deformations during use.

The researchers constructed integrated circuits consisting of transistors, oscillators, logic gates and amplifiers. The circuits exhibited extreme levels of bendability and stretchability, with electronic properties comparable to those of similar circuits built on conventional silicon wafers.

The new design and construction strategies represent general and scalable routes to high-performance, foldable and stretchable electronic devices that can incorporate established, inorganic electronic materials whose fragile, brittle mechanical properties would otherwise preclude their use, the researchers report.

“We’re opening an engineering design space for electronics and optoelectronics that goes well beyond what planar configurations on semiconductor wafers can offer,” Rogers said.

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.