Material Gradients in Stretchable Substrates toward Integrated Electronic Functionality

Naser Naserifar; Philip R LeDuc; Gary K Fedder

doi:10.1002/adma.201505818

Material Gradients in Stretchable Substrates toward Integrated Electronic Functionality

Adv Mater. 2016 May;28(18):3584-91. doi: 10.1002/adma.201505818. Epub 2016 Mar 17.

Authors

Naser Naserifar¹, Philip R LeDuc², Gary K Fedder³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Computational Biology and Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA.
³ Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA.

PMID: 26989814
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201505818

Abstract

The approach toward a stretchable electronic substrate employs multiple soft polymer layers patterned around silicon chips, which act as surrogates for conventional electronics chips, to create a controllable stiffness gradient. Adding just one intermediate polymer layer results in a six-fold increase in the strain failure threshold enabling the substrate to be stretched to over twice its length before delamination occurs.

Keywords: embedded silicon chips; energy strain rates; poly(dimethylsiloxane); stiffness gradients; stretchable electronics.