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Soft electronics has become multi-layered

22.08.2018

Soft PCBs could change the way we think about electronic devices. Flexible and soft electronics will allow you to create medical sensors that you can comfortably wear on yourself without fear of breaking. But how soon will we have such devices?

Various research groups have repeatedly demonstrated prototypes of soft electronics. As a rule, in such cases, they try to combine existing electronic components with a soft and durable substrate, or they try to create new flexible transistors and microcircuits. The employees of the University of California at San Diego have taken another step towards the release of "electronic-soft" technologies beyond the walls of laboratories. They took the first path by incorporating microscopic components into elastomer substrates, a polymer with high elasticity and viscosity.

However, unlike previous attempts, this time the soft board was made multi-layered. Previously, this did not work: the main difficulty was that it was not possible to create strong electrical connections between the layers. In ordinary, solid boards, this is no longer a problem, modern printed circuit boards can have several dozen layers, and the power of devices can be increased without changing their size.

To create a soft "layer cake", Zhenlong Huang (Zhenlong Huang) and his colleagues used laser technology: holes were burned into the thinnest elastomer substrates and then filled with a conductor material. Inside the layer, the components are connected using flexible copper threads twisted into spirals, which the authors of the work called "bridges"; There were four layers in total.

A soft device the size of a coin was literally stuffed with functions: a wireless communication module and a whole set of sensors (accelerometer, etc.) fit in it. A soft board was attached to the neck, head, hands, which made it possible to take an electroencephalogram, monitor heart rate and breathing. With the help of the board, it was also possible to control the robot's hand, tracking nerve impulses in the hand of one of the researchers: the robot moved its "fingers" and "hand" after the person.

In the future, the California laboratory intends to further increase the number of layers. Perhaps thanks to this technology, amazing new medical devices and all kinds of agile and agile soft robots will appear faster than we think.

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