Stanford Developes Nanowire Electronics To Suit Any Shape Of Surface

Stanford scientists have found a new way of applying a layer to attach a nanowire layer to almost any surface present in nature. The technique makes it possible to have a replacement for the silicon which serves as a substrate in many of the electronic circuitry. This paves in a way for a fast number of biological applications along with flexible computer displays and wearable electronics.

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Assistant Professor Xiaolin Zheng, center, with graduate students, Chi Hwan Lee, left and Dong Rip Kim.

Until now, the silicon surface which we used as a substrate is very brittle and rigid. This limitation makes it highly impracticable for their use in wearable electronics. Moreover the electric circuitery once implanted on any traditional silicon ship is undetachable and remains adhered to the chip. The new fabrication techniques involve the application of nickel on a silicon surface before any of the processes are applied on it. Upon a which another layer of polymer is also added which acts as an insulator and mechanical support for the electronic nanowires to be applied later. The nanowire circuitry can simply be wrapped on the surface of the polymer. The polymer is what which is the real back bone of this process. This makes the circuitry to be attached on any surface, right from paper, plastic to textiles giving it a wide range of applications.

Once the nickel is applied on silicon, it is detached in a watery environment. This is achieved in only a few seconds, given that both Silicon and Nickel are Hydrophilic in nature. This means that when they are subjected to water the water penetrates in between the surfaces and detaches the two surfaces also detaching the electronic circuitry along with it.

The polymer layer used in the fabrication is very thin. Roughly it is around 15 times thinner than an ordinary plastic which we use to wrap our food. The present thickness of the polymer which the team is using is 800 nanometers. However if there is any other thing which positively affects the flexibility of the circuitry, then it is the shorter length of the nanowires. It makes the devise so much flexible that it makes the sheet to be to cover any curved surface. The length of the nanowires used is only a few thousandths of millimeter which is also one of the plus points which subjects the nanowires to a minimum strain.

The device so fabricated can be repeatedly applied on different surfaces with almost any shape. The circuitry remains unaffected the process is 100% efficient. The technology as invented by the #-Link-Snipped-# will find wide applications in fields where an electrical signal is to be measured with high precision but where inserting electrodes could be equally risky. This means that we can use this technique in biological arena and also in developing a human brain interface. The paper in this regard is published in #-Link-Snipped-# authored by Xiaolin Zheng an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and co-authored by Chi Hwan Lee and Dong Rip Kim, both graduate students in Zheng's lab.

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