Flexible Electronics Could Replace Nerves

Flexible electronic structures with the potential to bend, expand, and manipulate electronic devices could find useful applications as sensors and as electronic devices that can be integrated into artificial muscles or other biological tissues.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory (ANL, IL, USA) and the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA), developed the flexible electronic structures from a concept that focused on forming single-crystalline semiconductor nanoribbons in stretchable geometrical configurations, with emphasis on the materials and surface chemistries used in their fabrication and the mechanics of their response to applied strains.

These concepts, as implemented with ribbons that have either periodic or aperiodic sinusoidal wavy or buckled shapes and are surface chemically bonded to elastomeric poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) supports, enable levels of mechanical stretchability and compressibility that exceed, by orders of magnitude, the intrinsic fracture strains in the ribbon materials themselves. The concept and technology were published in the March 2007 issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

"The objective of our work was to generate a concept along with subsequent technology that would allow for electronic wires and circuits to stretch like rubber bands and accordions leading to sensor-embedded covers for aircraft and robots, and even prosthetic skin for humans,” said scientist Yugang Sun, of the ANL center for nanoscale materials. "We are presently developing stretchable electronics and sensors for smart surgical gloves and hemispherical electronic eye imagers.”


Related Links:
Argonne National Laboratory