Mechanics of Stiff Thin Films of Controlled Wavy Geometry on Compliant Substrates for Stretchable Electronics

This chapter reviews two alternative approaches, including both experimental and theoretical studies, which overcome some or all of the limitations and thus have the potential for extensive applications in stretchable electronics and other emerging technologies. It reviews two conceptually different, but related, approaches to achieve reversible, elastic response to large strain deformations in inorganic films that can be used for electronics. It shows that these methods can be scaled to active devices, circuits, and full-integrated systems. Further optimization of the approaches and development of new application possibilities appear to represent promising directions for future work. There are two main approaches to achieve stretchability in electronics. One design uses isolated, rigid islands, which are fabricated with semiconductor components on top and linked by stretchable, interconnects of conducting materials. Another different, but complementary method is to directly produce stretchable electronic devices based on well-defined sinusoidal distributions of surface relief through non-linear buckling processes.