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A strain-isolation design for stretchable electronics

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Abstract

Stretchable electronics represents a direction of recent development in next-generation semiconductor devices. Such systems have the potential to offer the performance of conventional wafer-based technologies, but they can be stretched like a rubber band, twisted like a rope, bent over a pencil, and folded like a piece of paper. Isolating the active devices from strains associated with such deformations is an important aspect of design. One strategy involves the shielding of the electronics from deformation of the substrate through insertion of a compliant adhesive layer. This paper establishes a simple, analytical model and validates the results by the finite element method. The results show that a relatively thick, compliant adhesive is effective to reduce the strain in the electronics, as is a relatively short film.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 60208, USA

    Jian Wu, Ming Li & Yong-Gang Huang

  2. Department of Engineering Mechanics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China

    Ming Li & Zhan Kang

  3. Department of Engineering Mechanics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Wei-Qiu Chen

  4. Materials Research Laboratory, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Dae-Hyeong Kim, Yun-Soung Kim & John A. Rogers

  5. AML, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Keh-Chih Hwang

  6. Departments of Chemistry, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    John A. Rogers

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  1. Jian Wu
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  2. Ming Li
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  3. Wei-Qiu Chen
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  6. Yong-Gang Huang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yong-Gang Huang.

Additional information

The project was supported by NSF (DMI-0328162 and ECCS-0824129), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10820101048), Ministry of Education of China, and the National Basic Research Program of China (2007CB936803).

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Wu, J., Li, M., Chen, WQ. et al. A strain-isolation design for stretchable electronics. Acta Mech Sin 26, 881–888 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-010-0384-x

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