eWEAR: Strain-insensitive stretchable electronics for wearables

The development of intrinsically stretchable electronics has the potential to integrate electronic devices with human skin for applications in wearables for health diagnostics. While such a material has good mechanical robustness and offers high device density, most polymer-based, intrinsically stretchable electronics are created without strain engineering. As a result, the performance of the device and quality of the data could be affected when being used to collect physiological signals, in which there are strain variations.

In a recent paper published in Nature Electronics, a team of researchers led by Professor Zhenan Bao in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. student, Weichen Wang in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University, reported an all-elastomer, scalable fabrication process to create strain-insensitive, intrinsically stretchable transistor arrays (Figure 1). The team developed intrinsically stretchable transistor arrays with device density of 340 transistors/cm2 , comparable to state-of-the-art technology, and a strain insensitivity of less than 5% performance variation when stretched up to 100% strain. The material was also used to amplify weak electrophysiological signals when used in a skin-like polymeric circuit.

“We started this work as we believe that active programming of the strain distribution crossing electronic patch can successfully suppress the attenuation of electronic performance brought by mechanical deformation, leading to stable on-skin operation of stretchable devices. It could play a valuable role in the advancement of future health monitoring devices,” says Wang.

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