Innovator John Rogers

摘要

John Rogers was in his lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign six years ago, testing new ways to make electronic circuits, when one of his team members made a mistake. The researcher accidentally pulled a piece of rubber taut as he placed it underneath a circuit; when he released the stretched rubber, it sprang back and the circuit became a wavy, buckled mess. Rogers, a materials scientist, took a look at the results under a microscope and saw what he characterizes as "an accordion made of silicon." He realized he had hit pay dirt. "This is not a problem," Rogers recalls thinking at the time. "This is an opportunity."