Abstract
One of the main challenges in stretchable electronics is to achieve high-performance stretchable semiconductors. Here, we introduce an innovative concept of nanomeshed semiconductor nanomembrane which can be regarded almost as intrinsically stretchable to conventional microelectronic layouts. By making a silicon film into homogeneous nanomeshes with spring-like nano traces, we demonstrated a high electron mobility of 50 cm2/V·s, and moderate stretchability with a one-time strain of 25% and cyclic strain of 14% after stretching for 1000 cycles, further improvable with optimized nanomesh designs. A simple analytic model covering both fractional material and trace sidewall surfaces well predicted the transport properties of the normally on silicon nanomesh transistors, enabling future design and optimizations. Besides potential applications in stretchable electronics, this semiconductor nanomesh concept provides a new platform for materials engineering and is expected to yield a new family of stretchable inorganic materials having tunable electronic and optoelectronic properties with customized nanostructures.
Highlights
Stretchable electronics have emerged as promising platforms for many important areas such as bio-mimetics, health monitoring, biomedical therapeutics, and soft robotics.[1,2,3,4,5,6]
Core material elements in conventional high-performance electronics are inorganic single crystals such as silicon (Si) or compound semiconductors, which arguably laid the foundation for modern society.[17,18,19]
Patterning of Si nanomeshes in a SOI source wafer As shown in Supplementary Fig. 1, the nanomesh patterning started with a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer which was commercially available (SIMOX SOI, distributed by University Wafer)
Summary
Stretchable electronics have emerged as promising platforms for many important areas such as bio-mimetics, health monitoring, biomedical therapeutics, and soft robotics.[1,2,3,4,5,6] Due to their low modulus, these stretchable platforms can either serve as artificial electronic organs or form more conformal and compatible interface with irregular, shape-evolving or soft objects.[7,8,9] Compelling examples of such applications include electronic skin demonstrations from various stretchable active matrices[10,11,12] and multifunctional balloon catheters for cardiac electrophysiological mapping and ablation therapy.[13,14,15,16] Historically, core material elements in conventional high-performance electronics are inorganic single crystals such as silicon (Si) or compound semiconductors, which arguably laid the foundation for modern society.[17,18,19] those materials are usually rigid. The nanomeshed nanomembrane is a dense network of fully connected, single-crystalline Si traces of nanoscale line-width and thickness Due to their springlike traces, the semiconductor nanomeshes possess promising stretchability while with high electrical performance and high scalability to microscale footprints. An analytical model coupling factors from both the fractional material and trace sidewall surfaces predicted the mobility trend of the Si-nanomesh transistors as a function of fractional Si, indicating that the mobility can be enhanced with future surface passivation. Together these results demonstrate nanomeshing semiconductors as a unique and promising pathway towards high-density, high-performance stretchable microelectronics
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