A New Frontier of Printed Electronics: Flexible Hybrid Electronics
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REVIEW www.advmat.de A New Frontier of Printed Electronics: Flexible Hybrid Electronics Yasser Khan,* Arno Thielens, Sifat Muin, Jonathan Ting, Carol Baumbauer, and Ana C. Arias* printing techniques, these nontraditional The performance and integration density of silicon integrated circuits (ICs) electronics can be manufactured in large have progressed at an unprecedented pace in the past 60 years. While silicon areas—in the kilometers scale.[11–18] ICs thrive at low-power high-performance computing, creating flexible and Although developments of flexible and large-area electronics using silicon remains a challenge. On the other hand, printed electronics progressed significantly, they present a few major limitations that flexible and printed electronics use intrinsically flexible materials and printing multiple decades of research have not been techniques to manufacture compliant and large-area electronics. Nonethe- able to resolve—high power consumption, less, flexible electronics are not as efficient as silicon ICs for computation low performance and limited lifetime. On and signal communication. Flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) leverages the the other hand, silicon integrated circuits strengths of these two dissimilar technologies. It uses flexible and printed (ICs) do not suffer from these limitations and provide unparalleled performance at electronics where flexibility and scalability are required, i.e., for sensing and low power consumption for years. Never- actuating, and silicon ICs for computation and communication purposes. theless, silicon ICs are constrained to their Combining flexible electronics and silicon ICs yields a very powerful and rigid and bulky form factors. In addition, versatile technology with a vast range of applications. Here, the fundamental silicon IC manufacturing relies heavily on building blocks of an FHE system, printed sensors and circuits, thinned vacuum deposition that makes large-area [17,19–21] silicon ICs, printed antennas, printed energy harvesting and storage modules, scaling challenging and expensive. Flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) com- and printed displays, are discussed. Emerging application areas of FHE in bines silicon ICs to flexible and printed wearable health, structural health, industrial, environmental, and agricultural electronics and brings low-power and sensing are reviewed. Overall, the recent progress, fabrication, application, high-performance computing capabili- and challenges, and an outlook, related to FHE are presented. ties in large-area form factors. In essence, FHE is a versatile and powerful electronics platform, which is flexible, efficient, cost- effective, and large-area compliant. 1. Introduction Printing is currently a commercially viable manufacturing technology for fabricating electronics, mainly due to the In recent years, form factors of electronics have started to recent advances in printable metallic,[22,23] insulating,[24,25] change from their traditional rigid and rectangular shapes and semiconducting materials[26–30] and mature printing tech- to more complex form factors—soft, flexible, bendable, and niques.[26,31–36] While initial efforts in printed electronics were stretchable.[1–4] These next-generation electronics are lightweight directed toward display and lighting industries,[37–39] printed and conform to the curves of the body or bend around structures electronics now spans electronic devices,[40,41] sensors,[42–46] and objects. Researchers are using these new forms of elec- and even circuits[47–50] with applications in energy, health, and tronics to interface with biology and nature.[5–10] With advanced consumer electronics. In industry and academia, both passive and active electronic devices are manufactured using inkjet printing, screen printing, gravure printing, blade coating, spray [+] Dr. Y. Khan, Dr. A. Thielens, J. Ting, C. Baumbauer, Prof. A. C. Arias coating, and other hybrid printing methods. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California Standard silicon microfabrication utilizes blanket material Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA deposition, photolithography, and etch steps for each layer in E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] the device stack. In this subtractive process, vacuum deposition Dr. S. Muin or drop-casting is used for deposition. After photopatterning, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering the excess material is removed. Therefore, scaling up this sub- University of California tractive process to large-area is expensive and wasteful. On the Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA other hand, printing is an additive manufacturing process. The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201905279. Selective deposition of solution processable materials reduces cost by eliminating photolithography and etch steps used in [+]Present address: Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, 443 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4125, USA microfabrication. Large-area, high-volume, and roll-to-roll man- ufacturing are major strengths of printed electronics, in addi- DOI: 10.1002/adma.201905279 tion to the capability of printing devices on soft, flexible, and Adv. Mater. 2019, 1905279 1905279 (1 of 29) © 2019 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.advancedsciencenews.com www.advmat.de nontraditional substrates. Although progress has been made at a steady pace demonstrating printed organic transistors with Yasser Khan is a postdoctoral carrier mobilities over 1 cm2 V−1 s−1[51] and switching speed in scholar at Stanford University, the MHz range,[30] silicon electronics outperforms printed elec- advised by Professor tronics in terms of carrier mobilities and switching speeds in Zhenan Bao in chemical three orders of magnitudes, as shown in Figure 1a. However, engineering and Professor printed electronics provides unique advantages such as manu- Boris Murmann in electrical facturing on soft substrates in large-areas with high throughput. engineering. He received his These qualities are complementary to silicon ICs (Figure 1a). B.S. in electrical engineering FHE is a key enabling technology for system-level implemen- from the University of Texas tations of nonsilicon electronics.[52–56] Silicon ICs are mature at Dallas in 2010 and his and compatible with existing computation and communication M.S. in electrical engineering standards. On the other hand, data processing and transmission from King Abdullah University of flexible electronic systems need to be compatible with existing of Science and Technology in 2012. He completed his methods and standards—FHE provides that compatibility Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer sciences bridge. Figure 1b shows a system-level implementation of FHE. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2018, from The usage of silicon ICs and printed electronics in this system is Professor Ana Claudia Arias’s research group. His research shown using blue and orange color bars underneath the system focuses on wearable medical devices, with an emphasis on blocks. First, printed electronics is used for sensing. Second, skin-like soft sensor systems. printed circuits can also be used for signal conditioning. How- ever, in general, silicon ICs are employed for signal conditioning Arno Thielens is a postdoctoral and processing. Here, both technologies have potential overlap- researcher at UC Berkeley and ping usage. Finally, the data in a FHE system is displayed using Ghent University. He received a printed display or transmitted to a remote host. his M.S. degree and Ph.D. Breaking away from the rigid form factors of conventional degree in applied physics electronics, electronics that flex and wrap around the body, at Ghent University in 2010 objects, and structures have endless sensing applications. and 2015, respectively. He is Healthcare is currently the biggest application field for FHE, affiliated to Ghent University’s especially flexible wearable medical devices.[5,57–60] Sensitive and Waves group as a postdoctoral high-performance soft sensors are being developed for bioelec- researcher, where his research tronic, biophotonic, and biochemical sensing in research labs focuses on personal exposure around the world. Soft electronics are lightweight and comfort- assessment to radio-frequency able to wear, also do not compromise the measurement quality. electromagnetic fields and numerical dosimetry. Since Application areas for FHE stretch beyond healthcare. Printed 2017, he has also been a member of the Berkeley Wireless and large-area sensor arrays can be used for industrial, environ- Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, mental, and agricultural sensing.[61–64] Future Internet of things where he is working on antenna design, body area networks, (IoT) infrastructures will require a vast number of sensors that and the development of the human intranet. are high-performance and low-cost—FHE is well suited for deploying a massive number of devices. Also, structural health Ana C. Arias is a professor monitoring can benefit from distributed sensing where sensors of electrical engineering cover a vast area and provide critical parameters that can be cor- and computer sciences at related to the health of the structure.[65,66] Apart from civil struc- the University of California, tures, FHE can be used to monitor the performance and state Berkeley. She received her of cars and airplanes operating in normal and extreme condi-