technology innovation
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tretchable electronics concerns electrical and electronic circuits and combinations of these that are elastically or inelastically stretchable by more than a few percent while retaining function. Usually the elastic versions must withstand repeated flexing without loss of function as with a patch attached to a living heart for diagnostics, energy harvesting to power implants and/or control, for that, they tend to be laminar and usually thin. No definitions of electronics and electrical sectors are fully watertight but it is convenient to consider stretchable electronics as a part of printed electronics, a term taken to include printed and potentially printed (eg thin film) electronics and electrics. This is because the cost, space and weight reduction sought in most cases is best achieved by printing and printing-like technologies.
Stretchable electronics has been one of the least exploited but most researched sectors in electronics over the past decade. Commercialisation has been elusive and a number of manufacturers have left the scene, though the participants see huge potential. A good example of this was seen this year when the University of Gent researching the subject wrote, “Mechanically stretchable electronics are virtually non-existing today.”
Actually they are slightly underselling their industry because Artificial Muscle has commercialised electroactive devices employing elastic electrodes some years ago in haptic touch switches (you feel what you are doing) and promoted them for such things as energy harvesting and steerable serpentine camera lenses. Indeed the German giant Bayer AG has now snapped up this promising company. Nonetheless, it would be fair to say that the commercialisation of stretchable electronics has been disappointingly rare so far.
mc10 Inc in the USA is a rare example of a pure play stretchable electronics company. It works with partners in a joint development model to prototype and manufacture novel applications for consumer, military, medical and industrial applications, giving us a glimpse of where this nascent industry sees its products being used.
The value chain for printed electronics is unbalanced, with too little effort to commercialise the technologies, such as by designing innovative, amusing or useful new products, never before possible, created using the new toolkit. For example, the easiest commercialisation of
stretchable electronics may lie in consumer goods, jewellery, fashion, toys and novelties but almost all participants are focussed on the slow-moving healthcare sector that is understandably more demanding in terms of safety and quality requirements and approvals. Certainly many very interesting things are being done to modernise sportswear, for example.
That said, it is particularly in healthcare that stretchability, bringing portability, disposability, error prevention, wearability and so on reads on to many of the big trends and needs today. These include how to cope with an ageing population that wish to stay mobile and how to respond to the fact that there will not be enough physicians, hospitals and carers to cope using old procedures and equipment. Stretchable implanted and skin mounted electronic and electrical patches will diagnose and respond earlier, delivering drugs with
Issue III 2012
www.siliconsemiconductor.net 35
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granted.Image by John Rogers, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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