Stanford researchers create extensible circuits that flex the body

A group of Stanford researchers has spent the last two decades working to develop integrated skin type circuits that can be folded, folded, twisted without damaging their operating capacity. Extensible circuits can return to their original shape whenever they are stretched. A major obstacle that has been in the path of research is to determine how to produce the new technology in quantities large enough for marketing.

 The group has published a new study describing how they printed extensible and durable integrated circuits on rubbery skin materials using the same type of equipment that constructs solid silicon chips. The breakthrough could allow new material to be easily marketed by modifying foundries that currently make rigid circuits in factories that produce flexible factories. The researchers were able to transfer more than 40,000 transistors into a single square centimeter of extensible circuits.

The project researchers believe they will soon double the number of transistors on a square centimeter. However, they admit that the number of transistors capable of printing on their flexible material is far removed from the billions of transistors that can be printed on the silicon of the same size. However, their flexible material would contain sufficient transistors to create simple circuits for functions such as sensors on the skin, body-wide networks, implantable by electronics and possibly more.

The revolutionary construction method improves the elastic-transistor fate of more than 100 times what anyone has been able to achieve while maintaining excellent uniformity of the transistors. The material also sacrifices nothing electronic or mechanical performance to earn its flexibility.

The great gain for the Stanford invented process is that their flexible circuits can be created using equipment already inside foundries. The construction process is called photolithography and uses ultraviolet lights to transfer an electrically active geometric pattern detailed to a solid substrate layer by layer. The team also notes that their processes are more profitable and can produce extensible circuits to be less expensive than those rigid.