Electronic circuits that involve transistors and other components on bendable metal or plastic foil substrates offer mechanical properties (e.g. bendability) and other features (e.g. lightweight construction) that cannot be easily replicated with traditional technologies that use rigid, fragile semiconductor wafer or glass substrates. Many potential applications of electronics require, however, not only bendability but also fully reversible stretchability/compressibility. Examples include personal or structural health monitors or electronic eye imagers, in which electronics must conform to complex curvilinear shapes. From a materials standpoint, stretchability is much more challenging than bendability because nearly any class of material can be bendable if presented in sufficiently thin film form. An emerging strategy to stretchable electronics uses ‘wavy’ structural configurations of semiconductor nanomaterials and devices on elastomeric substrates, wherein the amplitudes and wavelengths of the ‘wavy’ shapes adjust to accommodate applied strains in a way that avoids fracture.1-3 This route is different than, but complementary to, related approaches in which stretchable metal wires interconnect rigid device islands. The following summarizes some of our recent work on stretchable single crystalline inorganic devices and integrated circuits on rubber substrates.
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