1. Membrane-Interface-Elastomer Structures for Stretchable Electronics
- Author
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Akhil Vohra, R. Stephen Carmichael, Tricia Breen Carmichael, and Kory Schlingman
- Subjects
Organic electronics ,Fabrication ,General Chemical Engineering ,Biochemistry (medical) ,Stretchable electronics ,Nanotechnology ,02 engineering and technology ,General Chemistry ,Substrate (electronics) ,Butyl rubber ,Conformable matrix ,010402 general chemistry ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,Elastomer ,01 natural sciences ,Biochemistry ,0104 chemical sciences ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Membrane ,chemistry ,Materials Chemistry ,Environmental Chemistry ,0210 nano-technology - Abstract
Summary The future of soft, conformable, and robust wearable electronics will require elastomers to provide mechanical stabilization, a soft surface to interact with human wearers, and a crucial physical barrier to protect stretchable devices from the environment. It is a difficult challenge, however, for a single elastomer to fulfill each of these needs. Here, we present an approach that fuses a membrane of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) onto the surface of a transparent butyl rubber (T-IIR) substrate by using an organosilane-based molecular glue. The resulting membrane-interface-elastomer (MINE) structures uniquely combine the surface chemistry of PDMS with the intrinsically low gas permeability of T-IIR for the fabrication of robust stretchable devices. Our most intriguing finding, however, is that the T-IIR-PDMS interface, buried microns below the PDMS surface, exerts a remarkable influence on metal films deposited on the PDMS membrane surface from below, improving stretching and conductance performance by orders of magnitude.
- Published
- 2018