Electronics on very thin substrates have shown remarkable bendability, conformability and lightness, which are important attributes for biological tissues sensing, wearable or implantable devices. Here we propose a wafer-scale process scheme to realize ultra flexible, lightweight and transparent electronics on top of a 1-mm thick parylene film that is released from the carrier substrate after the dissolution in water of a polyvinyl-alcohol layer. The thin substrate ensures extreme flexibility, which is demonstrated by transistors that continue to work when wrapped around human hairs. In parallel, the use of amorphous oxide semiconductor and high-K dielectric enables the realization of analogue amplifiers operating at 12 V and above 1 MHz. Electronics can be transferred on any object, surface and on biological tissues like human skin and plant leaves. We foresee a potential application as smart contact lenses, covered with light, transparent and flexible devices, which could serve to monitor intraocular pressure for glaucoma disease.
Woven electronic circuits combining thin‐film electronic devices and commercial integrated circuits with plastic fibers (e‐fibers) have been developed. This technology serves as a platform to integrate a large variety of microelectronic circuits, sensors, and systems intimately within textile architectures using commercial manufacturing methods.
In this paper, a woven textile containing temperature and humidity sensors realized on flexible, plastic stripes is presented. The authors introduce two different sensors fabrication techniques: the first one consists of a conventional photolithography patterning technique; the second one, namely inkjet-printing, is here presented as an effective, lowcost alternative. In both cases, we obtain temperature and humidity sensors that can be easily integrated within a fabric by using a conventional weaving machine. All the sensors are fully characterized and the performances obtained with the two different fabrication techniques are compared and discussed, pointing out advantages and drawbacks resulting from each fabrication technique. The bending tests performed on these sensors show that they can be successfully woven without being damaged. A demonstrator, consisting of a mechanical support for the e-textile, a read-out electronic circuit, and a graphical PC interface to monitor the acquisition of humidity and temperature values, is also presented and described. This paper opens an avenue for real integration between printed electronics and traditional textile technology and materials. Printing techniques may be successfully used for the fabrication of e-textile devices, paving the way for the production of large area polymeric stripes and thus enabling new applications that, at the moment, cannot be developed with the standard lithography methods.Index Terms-E-textiles, humidity and temperature sensors, inkjet-printing, plastic and flexible substrates, wearable electronics.
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