Inkjet-printed stretchable and low voltage synaptic transistor array

• Published in: Nature communications 2019-06, Vol.10 (1), p.2676-10, Article 2676
• Main Authors: Molina-Lopez, F., Gao, T. Z., Kraft, U., Zhu, C., Öhlund, T., Pfattner, R., Feig, V. R., Kim, Y., Wang, S., Yun, Y., Bao, Z.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 147/3; 639/166/898; 639/301/1005/1007; 639/301/923/1028; Brain; Brain-Computer Interfaces; Carbon nanotubes; Electronics, Medical - methods; Equipment Design; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Ink jet printers; Inkjet printing; Interfaces; Low voltage; Man-machine interfaces; multidisciplinary; Nanotechnology; Nanotechnology - methods; Nanotubes; Nanotubes, Carbon - chemistry; Neurons - physiology; Organic chemistry; Polymers; Polymers - chemistry; Printing - methods; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Semiconductor devices; Skin; Synaptic Transmission - physiology; Transistors; Transistors, Electronic; Wearable Electronic Devices; Wearable technology
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10569-3

Wearable and skin electronics benefit from mechanically soft and stretchable materials to conform to curved and dynamic surfaces, thereby enabling seamless integration with the human body. However, such materials are challenging to process using traditional microelectronics techniques. Here, stretchable transistor arrays are patterned exclusively from solution by inkjet printing of polymers and carbon nanotubes. The additive, non-contact and maskless nature of inkjet printing provides a simple, inexpensive and scalable route for stacking and patterning these chemically-sensitive materials over large areas. The transistors, which are stable at ambient conditions, display mobilities as high as 30 cm 2  V −1 s −1 and currents per channel width of 0.2 mA cm −1 at operation voltages as low as 1 V, owing to the ionic character of their printed gate dielectric. Furthermore, these transistors with double-layer capacitive dielectric can mimic the synaptic behavior of neurons, making them interesting for conformal brain-machine interfaces and other wearable bioelectronics. The development of novel low-cost fabrication schemes for realizing stretchable transistor arrays with applicability in wearable electronics remains a challenge. Here, the authors report skin-like electronics with stretchable active materials and devices processed exclusively from ink-jet printing.