Abstract
Flexible materials with sufficient mechanical endurance under bending or folding is essential for flexible electronic devices. Conventional rigid materials such as metals and ceramics are mostly brittle so that their properties can deteriorate under a certain amount of strain. In order to utilize high-performance, but brittle conventional materials in flexible electronics, we propose a novel flexible substrate structure with a low-modulus interlayer. The low-modulus interlayer reduces the surface strain, where active electronic components are placed. The bending results with indium tin oxide (ITO) show that a critical bending radius, where the conductivity starts to deteriorate, can be reduced by more than 80% by utilizing the low-modulus layer. We demonstrate that even rigid electrodes can be used in flexible devices by manipulating the structure of flexible substrate.
Highlights
Flexible electronic devices such as wearable sensors and flexible displays are emerging as they pioneer a new market with novel form factors[1]
There have been much efforts to increase the flexibility of brittle indium tin oxide (ITO);[20,21,22] these methods included complicated and high-priced processes
We introduce a low-modulus layer inside a regular flexible substrate to utilize brittle materials in flexible electronics, rather than developing novel materials
Summary
Flexible electronic devices such as wearable sensors and flexible displays are emerging as they pioneer a new market with novel form factors[1]. Since conventional electronic materials, which are typically metals and ceramics, are brittle, their electronic/optical properties deteriorate with a certain amount of strain In this regard, it is essential to pave the way to manufacture flexible electronic components that are tolerable against mechanical strain for flexible devices. Researchers studied the use of conventional materials in flexible electronic devices by manipulating the location of neutral plane with additional layers on top[15,16,17,18] This methodology has focused on embedding active components between polymeric materials with a proper thickness and Young’s modulus. By increasing the thickness ratio of the low-modulus material, the outer neutral planes move closer to the surface, so that the surface strain can be further reduced while bent We demonstrate this novel flexible substrate concept with brittle materials such as ITO and nickel. The Monolayer substrate is composed of high-modulus material (EH) only, whereas the Trilayer substrate contains a low-modulus interlayer (EL) in between the high-modulus layers
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