Materials, Device, And Interface Engineering for Non-Conventional Electronics by Hard/Soft Material Integration

整合具有互补特性的材料为生产结构和功能材料创造了新的机会。例如，人们可以通过采用聚合物材料作为基体，用高性能无机器件（传统上认为是易碎的）实现机械灵活性。实现这一壮举的关键在于将微型和/或纳米级无机器件组件精心集成到软材料基体中，同时保持优异的器件性能。通过硬材料和软材料的结合，实现了可弯曲、可折叠和可卷曲的电子产品等新颖的外形因素。目前创新研究的阶段是可伸缩电子产品，其中神经接口、电子肌肉和能量采集器显示出巨大的潜力。开发具有长期运行稳定性的可伸缩设备具有挑战性，因为电子设备必须在运行过程中承受严重的应变和体积变化。因此，导致器件失效的主要原因是软硬材料界面处的裂纹和脱粘。提议的DG计划的短期目标是通过控制界面上材料的形态和化学来防止界面上的这些机械失效模式。这些方法来自聚合物物理学和纳米制造学科，并受到生物学的启发。我的研究小组的长期目标是设计出具有前所未有外形因素的概念性新电子系统。对新型软材料基质以及微纳米器件的独立研究也将并行进行。DG计划的长期目标是研究在操作装置和新型软材料基体之间的界面上的各种现象。从宏观的角度来看，从DG项目中获得的知识也将适用于广泛的工程学科，如聚合物，复合材料，MEMS，界面科学和生物电子学。当系统级集成实现后，这些非传统的电子器件将在医学治疗、食品工程和生物医学科学等领域具有广泛的应用

Integrating materials with complementary properties have created new opportunities for producing structural and functional materials. For example, one can achieve mechanical flexibility with high-performance inorganic devices (which are traditionally thought of as brittle) by employing polymeric materials as matrices. The key to achieving this feat lays in carefully integrating micro- and/or nano-sized inorganic device components into a soft material matrix, while maintaining excellent device performance. Novel form factors, such as bendable, foldable, and rollable electronics have been realized through the marriage between hard and soft materials. The current stage of innovative research is on stretchable electronics, where neural interfaces, electronic muscles, and energy harvesters show immense potential. Developing stretchable devices with long-term operational stability is challenging because the electronics must withstand severe strain and volume change during operation. Consequently the major sources of device failure are crack and debonding at the interface between hard and soft materials. The short-term objective of the proposed DG program is to prevent these mechanical failure modes at the interface by controlling the material's morphology and chemistry at the interface. The methodologies come from the disciplines of polymer physics and nanofabrication and are inspired by biology. My research group's long-term goal is to devise conceptually new electronic systems with unprecedented form factors. Independent research on novel soft material matrices as well as micro- and nano-devices will also be performed in parallel. The long-term objective of the DG program is to study various phenomena at the interface between the operating devices and the novel soft material matrix. From a big-picture perspective, the knowledge gained from the DG program will also be applicable to wide range of engineering disciplines such as polymers, composite materials, MEMS, interface science, and bioelectronics. When system-level integration is realized, these non-conventional electronics will serve as novel tools with broad application in fields such as medical therapy, food engineering, and biomedical science.**