Technology

Advances in artificial skin with elastic circuitry

For the past 20 years, a group of researchers led by chemical engineer Zhenan Bao, have been researching and developing an artificial skin capable of stretching, bending, twisting and even folding without losing operability or function at any time.

The results of the research have been published in the journal Science, according to the article, each square centimeter contains more than 40,000 transmitters that are part of an extensible circuit, with the possibility of doubling the amount in the future.

One of the team's researchers, Yu-Qing Zheng, stated that the "method improves the density of stretchable transistors by more than 100 times of what anyone else has achieved so far." Without sacrificing performance, electronic or mechanical, of the transmitters.

To get the chip to hold that volume of transistors, they have used a rubbery polymer, capable of manipulating and stretching with no apparent problems.

The novelty of the artificial skin, in addition to its functionality, is the optical lithography technique used to manufacture transistor circuits on stretchable substrates, a method based on the use of ultraviolet light to control the local solubility of the polymer, making it possible to manufacture transistors on a micrometer scale.

The only drawback at the moment is the high production cost. Researchers are looking at how to produce these flexible chips at lower cost and mass production, so that they can be easily commercialized and used in numerous applications.

We definitely want to see more applications with flexible circuits.

For more information, you can read the article on the Stanford University portal here.

03 de Agosto, 2021