Reports

Submitted on December 19, 2007
Accepted on March 10, 2008

Stretchable and Foldable Silicon Integrated Circuits

Dae-Hyeong Kim ¹, Jong-Hyun Ahn ², Won Mook Choi ¹, Hoon-Sik Kim ¹, Tae-Ho Kim ¹, Jizhou Song ³, Yonggang Y. Huang ^4*, Zhuangjian Liu ⁵, Chun Lu ⁵, John A. Rogers ^6*

¹ Departments of Materials Science and Engineering, Beckman Institute, and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1304 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
² School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, 440-746, Korea.
³ Departments of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1206 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
⁴ Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
⁵ Institute of High Performance Computing, 1 Science Park Road, #01-01 The Capricorn, Singapore Science Park II, Singapore 117528.
⁶ Departments of Materials Science and Engineering, Beckman Institute, and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1304 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.; Departments of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1206 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.; Departments of Chemistry, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1304 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Yonggang Y. Huang , E-mail: y-huang{at}northwestern.edu
John A. Rogers , E-mail: jrogers{at}uiuc.edu

These authors contributed equally to this work.

We have developed a simple approach to high performance, stretchable, and foldable integrated circuits. The systems integrate inorganic electronic materials, including aligned arrays of nanoribbons of single crystalline silicon, with ultrathin plastic and elastomeric substrates. The designs combine multilayer neutral mechanical plane layouts and "wavy" structural configurations in silicon complementary logic gates, ring oscillators, and differential amplifiers. We performed three-dimensional analytical and computational modeling of the mechanics and the electronic behaviors of these integrated circuits. Collectively, the results represent routes to devices, such as personal health monitors and other biomedical devices, that require extreme mechanical deformations during installation/use and electronic properties approaching those of conventional systems built on brittle semiconductor wafers.

From the Cover: The macroscopic delamination of thin films from elastic substrates.

D. Vella, J. Bico, A. Boudaoud, B. Roman, and P. M. Reis (2009)
PNAS 106, 10901-10906
 |  Abstract »  |  Full Text »  |  PDF »

A curvy, stretchy future for electronics.

J. A. Rogers and Y. Huang (2009)
PNAS 106, 10875-10876
 |  Full Text »  |  PDF »

Stress-driven buckling patterns in spheroidal core/shell structures.

J. Yin, Z. Cao, C. Li, I. Sheinman, and X. Chen (2008)
PNAS 105, 19132-19135
 |  Abstract »  |  Full Text »  |  PDF »

From the Cover: Materials and noncoplanar mesh designs for integrated circuits with linear elastic responses to extreme mechanical deformations.

D.-H. Kim, J. Song, W. M. Choi, H.-S. Kim, R.-H. Kim, Z. Liu, Y. Y. Huang, K.-C. Hwang, Y.-w. Zhang, and J. A. Rogers (2008)
PNAS 105, 18675-18680
 |  Abstract »  |  Full Text »  |  PDF »

A Rubberlike Stretchable Active Matrix Using Elastic Conductors.

T. Sekitani, Y. Noguchi, K. Hata, T. Fukushima, T. Aida, and T. Someya (2008)
Science 321, 1468-1472
 |  Abstract »  |  Full Text »  |  PDF »

Stress and Fold Localization in Thin Elastic Membranes.

L. Pocivavsek, R. Dellsy, A. Kern, S. Johnson, B. Lin, K. Y. C. Lee, and E. Cerda (2008)
Science 320, 912-916
 |  Abstract »  |  Full Text »  |  PDF »

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