An associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, has developed a silicon-on-insulator (SOI)–complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process for fabricating flexible electronics. As reported in Applied Physics Letters, the technology may some day be used in a range of wearable health monitoring devices and medical implants, such as retinal prostheses, balloon catheters, and stents.
The new method fabricates high-performance, high-density CMOS circuits on SOI wafers and uses two layers of a polymer, Parylene C, to laminate the circuits to flexible substrates. The sandwiched electronics protects the circuits from environmental moisture. Flexible Parylene C is biocompatible and has already has been used in medical device applications.
This new process allows more electronic devices to be attached to the flexible surface by eliminating the transfer-printing step, in which electronics are removed from a harder surface and integrated into a softer one and various sensors and microfluidic devices can be integrated into the flexible substrate.
