Materials and noncoplanar mesh designs for integrated circuits with linear elastic responses to extreme mechanical deformations

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2008-12, Vol.105 (48), p.18675-18680
• Main Authors: Kim, Dae-Hyeong, Song, Jizhou, Choi, Won Mook, Kim, Hoon-Sik, Kim, Rak-Hwan, Liu, Zhuangjian, Huang, Yonggang Y, Hwang, Keh-Chih, Zhang, Yong-wei, Rogers, John A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: buckling mechanics; CMOS; Deformation; Design; Elasticity; Electronics; Electronics - instrumentation; Equipment Design; flexible electronics; Fracture mechanics; Humans; Integrated circuits; Inverters; Materials elasticity; MATERIALS SCIENCE; Materials Testing; Metal bridges; Nanostructures; Nanotechnology - instrumentation; Nanotechnology - methods; Physical Sciences; plastic electronics; semiconductor nanomaterials; Semiconductor wafers; Silicon; Stress, Mechanical; stretchable electronics; Tensile Strength; Transistors, Electronic
• ISSN: 0027-8424; 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0807476105

Electronic systems that offer elastic mechanical responses to high-strain deformations are of growing interest because of their ability to enable new biomedical devices and other applications whose requirements are impossible to satisfy with conventional wafer-based technologies or even with those that offer simple bendability. This article introduces materials and mechanical design strategies for classes of electronic circuits that offer extremely high stretchability, enabling them to accommodate even demanding configurations such as corkscrew twists with tight pitch (e.g., 90° in [almost equal to]1 cm) and linear stretching to "rubber-band" levels of strain (e.g., up to [almost equal to]140%). The use of single crystalline silicon nanomaterials for the semiconductor provides performance in stretchable complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits approaching that of conventional devices with comparable feature sizes formed on silicon wafers. Comprehensive theoretical studies of the mechanics reveal the way in which the structural designs enable these extreme mechanical properties without fracturing the intrinsically brittle active materials or even inducing significant changes in their electrical properties. The results, as demonstrated through electrical measurements of arrays of transistors, CMOS inverters, ring oscillators, and differential amplifiers, suggest a valuable route to high-performance stretchable electronics.