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03/12/2008
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Two US researchers have developed electronic components and circuitry that can be twisted, especially suitable for systems that could be worn by humans
Yonggang Huang, Joseph Cummings professor of civil and environmental engineering and mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and John Rogers, the Flory-Founder Chair professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have improved their technology to create circuits that can be twisted. Such electronics could be used in places where flat, unbending electronics would fail, such as on the human body.
Huang focuses on theory, and Rogers focuses on experiments. Back in 2005, the pair developed a one-dimensional, stretchable form of single-crystal silicon that could be stretched in one direction without altering its electrical properties. Earlier this year they made stretchable integrated circuits. Now they have developed a technology that allows circuits to be placed on a curved surface. This uses an array of circuit elements approximately 100 microns square that are connected by metal “pop-up bridges.”
The circuit elements are so small that when placed on a curved surface, they don't bend, in the same way that buildings do not bend on the much larger curved surface of the Earth. The system works because the elements are connected by metal wires that pop up when bent or stretched.
In the latest research, Huang and Rogers have taken their pop-up bridges and made them into an “S” shape, which, in addition to bending and stretching, has enough give that they can be twisted as well.
“For a lot of applications related to the human body - like placing a sensor on the body - an electronic device needs not only to bend and stretch but also to twist,” said Huang. “So we improved our pop-up technology to accommodate this. Now it can accommodate any deformation.”
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Author
Tom Shelley
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