Flexible Silicon Chips Create Opportunities for Biomedical Implants

Normally fragile and brittle silicon chips have been made to bend and fold, paving the way for a new generation of flexible electronic devices such as biomedical implants, advanced brain implants, health monitors or smart clothing. These complex devices consist of concertina-like folds of ultra-thin silicon bonded to sheets of rubber.

The silicon chips can be bent, stretched and folded whilst maintaining the electronic capabilities of traditional microchips. The circuits are built from ribbons of single crystalline silicon supported on very thin plastic and rubber-like layers.

Writing in the journal Science, the US researchers say the chip’s performance is similar to conventional electronics.

“Silicon microelectronics has been a spectacularly successful technology that has touched virtually every part of our lives,” said Professor John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the authors of the paper.

But, he said, the rigid and fragile nature of silicon made it very unattractive for many applications, such as biomedical implants. The stretchy circuits could be used in wearable health monitors

“In many cases you’d like to integrate electronics conformably in a variety of ways in the human body - but the human body does not have the shape of a silicon wafer.”

Via BBC

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