April 22 - 26, 2019
Phoenix, Arizona
2019 MRS Spring Meeting

Symposium EP04-Soft and Stretchable Electronics—From Fundamentals to Applications

Electronic devices have rapidly evolved into highly flexible, curvilinear and stretchable formats that enable new biomedical, robotic and consumer health related applications. Development of stretchable inorganic/organic electronics, wireless communication modules, biosensors, and soft encapsulating substrates underlie this ascension in recent years. As a result, advances in system-level mechanics with implications for emerging biomedical devices, human-machine interface designs, e-skins, prosthetics, surgical/nonsurgical robotics, plastronics and flexible optical instruments for imaging and telecommunication have been observed.

After more than two decades of academic and industry research, this new class of electronics is beginning to have commercial impact. In order to achieve this translational feat, there are several important challenges that are being addressed today, including the development of effective encapsulation; robust circuity and interconnects; mechanical robustness; long term stability; etc.

This symposium envisions a collection of abstracts that highlight these major challenges in translation and the state-of-the-art designs, experiments and manufacturing approaches, which are beginning to overcome these challenges. The symposium will be open to various groups with a focus on materials and approaches to tailor them for soft and stretchy electronics, medical devices, sensors and systems that exploit soft/stretchable electronics and their applications. The presenters will cover core technology capabilities including synthesis, fabrication, characterization, modeling approaches, along with translational applications that highlight system level deployment in the field.

Topics will include:

  • Functional materials for soft electronics
  • Nanomaterials and composites for soft electronics
  • Novel types of electroactive elastomers
  • Novel device fabrication processes
  • Mechanical design and materials technologies for soft and stretchy electronics
  • Wearable electronics: sensors and health monitors
  • Brain machine interfaces
  • Neuroprosthetic devices
  • Implantable electronics and systems
  • Soft robotics and prosthetics
  • Soft self-healing materials, devices and systems
  • Energy storage—stretchable batteries and supercapacitors for implantable devices
  • Commercialization

Invited Speakers:

  • Darren Lipomi (University of California, San Diego, USA)
  • Takao Someya (University of Tokyo, Japan)
  • Jong-Hyun Ahn (Yonsei University, Republic of Korea)
  • Dae-Hyeong Kim (Seoul National University, Republic of Korea)
  • Nanshu Lu (University of Texas at Austin, USA)
  • Michael Dickey (North Carolina State University, USA)
  • Rebecca Kramer (Yale University, USA)
  • George Malliaras (Ecole de MINES Saint-Étienne, France)
  • Bozhi Tian (University of Chicago, USA)
  • Tsuyoshi Sekitani (Osaka University, Japan)
  • Martin Kaltenbrunner (Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria)
  • Qibing Pei (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
  • Siegfried Bauer (Johannes Kepler University, Austria)
  • Xue Feng (Tsinghua University, China)
  • Yongang Huang (Northwestern University, USA)
  • Stéphanie Lacour (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
  • Tse Nga Ng (University of California, San Diego, USA)
  • Robert Shepherd (Cornell University, USA)
  • Zhigang Suo (Harvard University, USA)
  • Jan Vanfleteren (Gent University, Belgium)

Symposium Organizers

Marc Ramuz
MINES Saint-Étienne
Flexible Electronics Department
France

Roozbeh Ghaffari
Northwestern University / Epicore Biosystems, Inc. / MC10 Inc.
Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics
USA

Pooi See Lee
Nanyang Technological University
School of Materials Science and Engineering
Singapore

Cunjiang Yu
University of Houston
Mechanical Engineering
USA

Topics

biomedical elastic properties fatigue film microelectronics polymer sensor strain relationship tissue tribology