Flexible Electronics: Materials, Methods and Devices
(ES 662)
Dr. Biswajit Saha
Chemical Engineering Department
IIT Gandhinagar
Flexible Electronics:
• Flexible electronics refer to electronic circuits, components, or devices that are manufactured using flexible
substrates or materials, allowing them to bend, stretch, or conform to various shapes without losing their
functionality.
• Traditional electronics are built on rigid materials like silicon,
but flexible electronics use materials like plastics, organic
polymers, or other flexible materials as a base.
• The flexibility of these electronics opens up new
possibilities for creating devices that can adapt to
different form factors, conform to the human body,
be integrated into clothing or accessories, and even
be used in environments where rigid electronics
wouldn't be suitable.
Flexible Electronics:
A generic large-area electronics structure is composed below components:
❑ Substrate
❑ Back-plane
❑ Front-plane
❑ Encapsulation
Schematic diagram of organic thin film transistor (TFT)
Technologies and Integration process:
Essential characteristics for manufacturing of devices:
• Superior and pre-specified performance,
• Reproducibility,
• Uniformity
• Reliability
• High yield to an acceptable tolerance
• Simulation for reverse engineering during development and design
• Proven adequate in-service lifetime
Example flexible devices:
Flexible circuit board:
Flexible circuits are made up of flexible substrates usually polyimide, polyester or thin sheets of glass
Flexible display:
Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are normally used instead of a back-light
Technologies for flexible display:
Tech. Liquid crystal display Electrophoretic display Organic light emitting diode
(Light-modulating properties (Motion of particles under an (Film of organic compound that
of liquid crystals) electrical force) emits light)
Structure
Prototype Industrial Technology Research ITRI 2009 ITRI 2010
Institute (ITRI) 2007
Flexibility Poor Good Excellent
Performanc Excellent Poor Excellent
e (Video)
Manufacturing of flexible circuit & devices:
Various technology have been tested for the fabrication of flexible electronics including Roll to Roll process, Inkjet printing, Soft
lithography
Roll to Roll process Inkjet printing Soft lithography
Photo lithography
Market Growth:
• The market for flexible, printed and organic large-area electronics is rapidly growing.
• The global flexible electronics market size was estimated at USD 29 billion in 2022 and is projected to
surpass around USD 71.54 billion by 2032
• Factors contributing to growth include portability, lightweight, and low cost of production as compared to
rigid substrates.
• These devices hold tremendous potential in
influencing adoption in every industry
Market Dynamics:
Driver: Rising demand for consumer
Flexible electronics are cost-effective, durable, and reliable, and widely used in smartphones, PCs, TVs,
tablets, wearables, and other consumer electronic devices.
Flexible displays are integrated in such devices to save on space and reduce thickness and weight.
Restraint: High investment cost
Regarding new technologies, cost reduction is often a strong driver of R&D efforts. However, the cost of new
materials and equipment for flexible electronics research is very high.
Manufacturers need a huge focus on R&D to create value beyond cost reduction, such as thinner and more
lightweight, robust and flexible products.
Challenge: Difficult repair and rework
Repairing and reworking flexible electronics is a very challenging process. The types of damage to flexible
electronics can include ripped or cut flex material, heat-damaged/lifted pads and damaged conductors.
History of Flexible Electronics:
• Flexible can mean many qualities: (i) Bendable, (ii) Conformably shaped, (ii) Elastic, (iv) Lightweight,
(iv) Non-breakable, (v) Roll-to-roll manufactural, or (vi) Large-area. The field has open boundaries that
move with its development and application.
- To the industrial community today, flexible electronics means flexible displays and X-ray sensor arrays.
- To researchers, flexible means conformably shaped displays and sensors, electronic textiles, and electronic
skin.
• Flexible electronics has a reasonably long history. 80 years ago, single-crystalline silicon solar cells were
thinned to raise their power/weight ratio for use in satellites. Because these cells were thin, they were
flexible and warped like corn flakes.
• The development of flexible electronics dates back to the 1960s. The first flexible solar cell arrays were
made by thinning single-crystal silicon wafer cells to ∼100 μm and then assembling them on a plastic
substrate to provide flexibility.
• Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si H) is fabricated on flexible metal and polymer substrates because
of their relatively low deposition temperature.
• In 1976, researchers reported a Pt/a-Si:H solar cell made on a stainless-steel substrate, which also served
as the back contact.
• In the early 1980s, n+–i a-Si:H/Pt and p+–i–n+ a-Si:H/ITO solar cells were made on organic polymer
(“plastic”) film substrates.
• In the early 1980s, the roll-to-roll fabrication of a-Si:H solar cells on flexible steel and organic polymer
substrates was introduced. Today, a-Si:H solar cells routinely are made by roll-to-roll processes.
• In the mid-1980s, the active-matrix liquid-crystal display (AMLCD) industry started in Japan by
adopting the large-area plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD).
• In 1997, polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) TFTs made on plastic substrates using laser-annealing were
reported.
- Since then, research on flexible electronics has expanded rapidly, and many research groups and companies
have demonstrated flexible displays on either steel or plastic foil substrates.
• In 2006, a prototype flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display with full-color and full-motion
with a poly-Si TFT backplane made on steel foil (by Universal Display Corporation and the Palo Alto
Research Center presented).
• In 2010s-Present: Wearable devices like smartwatches, fitness trackers, and flexible health sensors gained
popularity. These devices utilize flexible electronics to conform to the body and provide functionality while
being comfortable to wear.
Transfer of patterns:
• In this approach, the whole structure is fabricated by standard methods on a carrier substrate like a Si
wafer or a glass plate. Then it is transferred to a flexible substrate.
• The transfer-and-bond approach has been extended to the bonding of ribbons of Si and GaAs devices to a
stretched elastomer.
• The transfer approaches have the advantage of providing high-performance devices on flexible substrates.
These processes are sophisticated advances over the original flexible wafer-based solar cell arrays.
• Their drawbacks are small surface area coverage and high cost.
Transfer process:
Nanomaterials 2019, 9(2), 283
Direct fabrication:
• Direct fabrication methods require:
(i) Polycrystalline or amorphous semiconductors can be grown on foreign substrates
• A compromise between device performance and low process temperatures tolerated by polymer foil
substrates.
(i) Innovation for processes and materials
• New process techniques include the printing of etch masks, the additive printing of active device
materials, and the introduction of electronic functions by local chemical reactions.
• Nanocrystalline silicon and printable polymers for OLEDs are also materials of intense research.
Degrees of Flexibility:
• Flexibility can mean many different properties to manufacturers and users. As a mechanical
characteristic, it is conveniently classified in the three categories : (i) bendable or rollable, (ii) No
permanent shape (deformable), and (iii) elastically stretchable
Bendable or rollable Not permanently shaped Elastically stretchable
• However, microfabrication tools have been developed for flat substrates. Therefore, at present all
manufacturing is done on a flat workpiece that is shaped only as late as possible in the process.
• When a mechanically homogeneous sheet of thickness “d” is bent to a cylindrical radius “r”, perpendicularly
to the axis of bending, its outside surface expands and inside surface is compressed by the bending strain ε =
d/2r. When the sheet is not homogeneous, the strain in the surfaces is modified from this simple expression.
Degrees of Flexibility:
• In TFT backplanes or in entire displays, the strain ε must
be kept below the critical value. The straightforward
approach to keeping ε low, is to make the structure
thin.
• Elastically stretchable electronics can undergo large
and reversible deformation. When the substrate is
an elastomer, devices are placed on rigid islands and
are interconnected with elastically stretchable
conductors.
• Alternatively, a substrate configured as a net-like open
surface can be deformed reversibly without damaging
the electronics that are made on the ribs of the net.
• Materials that can undergo large plastic deformation are employed, and a flat electronic surface may be
shaped without causing damage.
Flexible Electronics: Materials, Methods and Devices
(ES 662)
Dr. Biswajit Saha
Chemical Engineering Department
IIT Gandhinagar
Substrates:
Flexible substrates that are to serve as replacements for plate glass substrates must meet various requirements:
(1) Optical properties
– Transmissive or bottom-emitting displays need
optically clear substrates. In addition, substrates for
LCDs must have birefringence.
Birefringence
(2) Surface roughness
– The thinner the device films, the more sensitive their electrical function is to surface roughness. Asperities
and roughness over short distances must be avoided, but roughness over long distances is acceptable.
As-received metal substrates are usually rough on both scales, while plastic substrates rough over long
distances.
Substrates:
(3) Thermal and thermomechanical properties
– The working temperature of the substrate (Example: the
glass transition temperature (Tg) of a polymer) must be
compatible with the maximum fabrication process
temperature (Tmax).
Glass transition temperature (Tg)
- Thermal mismatch between device films and substrate may cause films
to break during the thermal cycling associated with fabrication. A rule of
thumb for tolerable mismatch is |ΔCTE·ΔT| ≤ 0.1–0.3%,
where ΔCTE: Difference in coefficients of thermal expansion
between substrate and device film, and
ΔT: The temperature excursion during processing.
(4) Chemical properties
– The substrate should not release contaminants and should be inert against process chemicals.
- Substrates that are good barriers against permeation by atmospheric gases are preferred.
- For OLED application, the water vapor permeation rate should lie below 10-6 g/m2/day and the oxygen
permeation rate below 10-3 to 10-5 cm3/m2/day.
(5) Mechanical properties
– A high elastic modulus makes the substrate stiff and is not preferred for flexible devices.
(6) Electrical and magnetic properties –
- Conductive substrates may serve as a common node and as an electromagnetic shield.
- Electrically insulating substrates minimize coupling capacitances.
- Magnetic substrates can be used for the temporary mounting of the substrate during fabrication, or for
affixing the finished product.
Thin Glass
• Glass plates are the current standard substrates in flat panel display technology. Plate glass becomes
flexible when its thickness is reduced to several 100 μm.
• The downdraw method can produce glass foils as thin as 30 μm. Foil glass retains all the advantages of plate
glass:
- Optical transmittance of >90% in the visible,
- Low stress birefringence,
- Smooth surface with RMS roughness of 1 nm or less,
- Temperature tolerance of up to 600◦C,
- High dimensional stability,
- A low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of ∼4×10–6/◦C.
• However, flexible glass is fragile and difficult to handle.
- To reduce breakage of foil glass during handling, foil glass can be laminated
with plastic, can apply a thin hard coat, or applying a thick polymer coat.
Metal Foil
• Generally, metal foil substrates less than ∼125 μm thick are flexible and are attractive substrates for
emissive or reflective displays, which do not need transparent substrates.
• Stainless steel has been most commonly used in research because of its high resistance to corrosion and
process chemicals, and its long record of application in amorphous silicon solar cells.
• Stainless steel substrates can tolerate process temperature as high as 1,000◦C, are dimensionally stable,
present a perfect barrier against moisture and oxygen, serve as heat sink, and can provide
electromagnetic shielding.
• In general, stainless-steel substrates are more durable than plastic and glass foils.
Disadvantages:
• A typical stainless-steel foil comes with sharp rolling marks in micrometer-size, which may cause devices
to fail.
• The most carefully rolled steel has a surface roughness of ∼100 nm, in contrast to display glass with less
than 1 nm.
>> To ensure the electrical integrity of the thin-film devices made on them, steel foil substrates must
be either polished well or planarized with a film of organic polymers, methylsiloxane and silicate.
• Metal substrates are electrically conducting. In some applications, they can serve as back contact, as in
solar cells. For other applications metal must be coated with an insulating layer to provide circuit
isolation.
>> SiNx or SiO2 layers are commonly used for this purpose on steel substrates. A barrier layer of
0.2–0.4 μm suffices for electrical insulation as it reduces the leakage current at a potential difference
of 50 V to 1 nA/cm2.
Polymeric Film
• Polymer foil substrates are highly flexible, inexpensive, and roll-to-roll processable.
• Disadvantages:
- Polymers are thermally and dimensionally less stable than glass substrates
- Oxygen and water permeability is high
- A low glass transition temperature (Tg), high coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), not compatible with
the device process temperature.
✔ Typical polymer films are shrunk by heating and cooling cycles. A small thermal mismatch stress
can cause misalignment and wavy surfaces.
✔ A large CTE mismatch can break a device film. Polymer substrates with CTE below 20 ppm/◦C
are preferred as substrates for silicon-based device materials.
• Potential polymers candidate for flexible substrates include:
- The thermoplastic semicrystalline polymers: polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyethylene
naphthalate (PEN),
- The thermoplastic noncrystalline polymers: polycarbonate (PC) and polyethersulphone (PES), and
- High-Tg materials: polyarylates (PAR), polycyclic olefin (PCO), and polyimide (PI).
• PC, PES, and PCO: are optically clear and have relatively high Tg (compared to PET and PEN), but their
CTEs are 50 ppm/◦C or higher, and their resistance to process chemicals is poor.
- Much research has been conducted with PET, PEN, and PI for the improvement of
CTEs, elastic moduli, and resistance to process chemicals.
• PET and PEN are optically clear with transmittance of >85% in the visible, and they absorb relatively little
water (∼0.14%). However, their process temperatures are only ∼150 and ∼200◦C.
• PI: has a high glass transition temperature of ∼350◦C, but it is yellow and absorbs as much as
1.8% moisture.
- No polymer meets the extremely demanding requirement for low permeability in organic light-emitting diode
(OLED) applications.
• The typical water and oxygen permeation rates of flexible plastic substrates are 1–10 g/m2/day and 1–10
cm3/m2/day, respectively.
• Barrier layer coatings can reduce absorption and permeability by gas, raise resistance to process
chemicals, strengthen adhesion of device films, and reduce surface roughness.
Example of Flexible Electronics
Thin Film Transistors (TFTs):
• A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power.
• TFT is a form of transistor fabricated by depositing thin films of an active semiconductor, dielectric, and
metallic layers on supporting substrates.
• Recently, the use of nanomaterials, including CNT and organics as the active semiconductor layer, has
accelerated the substrate independence in TFT.
Organic TFTs:
• Organic semiconductor materials including conjugated polymers, oligomers, or fused aromatics have a
significant practical impact in many different electronic devices.
• Typical Organic TFT (OTFT) comprises the organic semiconductors as active layer, gate dielectrics, and
three electrodes of source, drain, and gate.
• The voltage applied to source/drain flows through the organic semiconductor channel layer and the channel
current can be modulated by the gate electrode.
• Since most organic semiconductors are
soluble in organic solvents,
solution-processed OTFT facilitates
employment in flexible, wearable, and
stretchable membranes.
P3HT: Poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl)
Adv. Mater. 2015, 27, 7058–7064
Carbon Nanotube-Based TFTs
• One-dimensional single wall CNTs (SWCNT), which have normally p-type characteristic, exhibit
extraordinary electrical, thermal, and mechanical performance due to their intrinsic molecular structure.
• In particular, CNTs, well dispersed in solution, are recognized as a practical means to flexible TFT
electronics.
• CNT TFT printed between the source (S) and drain (D) electrodes on flexible PI substrates to demonstrate
comparable performance.
• CNT TFT can be fabricated by sequential transfer of
active layers.
- Layers of gate (Au), gate dielectric (cross-linked
poly(4-vinylphenol); cPVP), and source/drain (Au) are
prepared on a flexible Polyethylene Naphthalate
(PEN) substrate in sequence.
- CNT network was transferred and patterned CNT
onto the cPVP surface.
Displays
• A major objective in the research field of next-generation displays is to develop freely deformable
light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with excellent device performance.
• Recent advancements in flexible LEDs have been focused on two types of materials, organic LED
(OLED) and quantum dot LED (QLED), due to their outstanding stability and efficiency under
deformations.
• OLED integrated on flexible substrates enables the electronics to be bent, rolled, and even stretched
because the organics with different bandgap energy can be solution-processed.
• OLED-based flexible displays are being mass-produced, and LG Display introduced a 77-inch
ultra-high-definition (UHD).
• The most important issue remaining for the practical application of flexible displays is their short
lifetimes, caused by the poor environmental stability of OLEDs.
• The recent progress in solution-processed patterning techniques has made it possible to integrate the flexible,
full-color QLED electronics.
• Quantum dot (QD) materials have advantages in optical
characteristics including:
- Excellent color purity
- Wide bandgap tunability and
- High electroluminescence (EL) brightness.
• The wavy structured QLED patterned on human skin
reveals stretching up to 50%, particularly extreme 30%
compression on the human skin.
Sensors
Gas
• Sensors enabling precise detection of environmental hazard have been intensively studied in the research field
of deformable electronics. The flexible and wearable sensors capturing signals from gases and light.
• Recent advances in nanotechnologies facilitate the gas sensing based on the flexible and wearable formats.
Among them, carbonaceous nanomaterials are ideal for gas molecule adsorption due to their extremely
high surface-to-volume ratio.
• Since most carbon-based nanomaterials have p-type characteristic, the charge recombination occurs in the
presence of n-typed gases donating the electrons, which results in the sudden increase in resistance.
• Similarly, CNT exhibits a response to hydrogen sulfide molecules,
caused by the change in conductivity.
• Integration of CNT and Cu NPs selectively contributes to detecting
the target gas molecules due to the modulation of the charge density.
• Many nanomaterials including various metal oxide have been studied
for flexible and wearable gas sensor.
UV
• The semiconductor nanomaterials with wide bandgap energy matching with UV wavelength are promising
candidates for UV photodetector.
• Flexible UV sensors manufactured by high-quality ZnO QD-decorated Zn2SnO4 nanowires demonstrate
good performance.
• Wearable, epidermal UV sensor platform shows color change of sensing materials depending on the UV
exposure time.
pH
• Monitoring miscellaneous environmental responses including pH, temperature, and pressure is
important research field in a human being due to climate change, global warming, and acid rain caused by
expanding industrialization.
• Colorimetric (pH-sensitive dyes), wearable pH sensor based on a micro-fluidic platform that exploits
ionic liquid polymer gel. It can measure pH of sweat.
• Although the colorimetric devices are less accurate than general potentiometric sensors, it is an
attractive technology in terms of simplicity of material and design.
Pressure and Temperature
• Once an external pressure is loaded on a device with thermoelectric and piezo-resistive effects, the
switch disconnects the one sensing module from other modules to allow concise measurement of
temperature and pressure.
• Flexible and wearable sensor array worn on a prosthetic hand. The change in temperature and pressure
caused by arm-wrestling corresponds to the mapping profiles of pixel signals.
Healthcare-Monitoring Devices
• Soft, skin-interfaced sensors and electronics enable the measurements of noninvasive biophysical and
biochemical signals associated with activity of the heart, brain, eyes, muscles, and metabolite for
healthcare monitoring.
Human-Machine Interfaces
Human-machine interfaces represent another important research study in the area of humanoid robotics,
prosthetic hand, drone, display interface, and machine-assisted living.
Batteries
• Soft battery-based energy storage technology has become one of the popular research topics for the
application ranging from powering homes and electric vehicles to miniaturized electronics and medical
devices.
• These batteries require high specific energy densities, fast recharging capabilities, and superior cycle
stabilities even under various complicated deformation conditions. In this regard, rechargeable
lithium-ion batteries have shown great representative power source due to their high-energy capacity and
long-term cyclability.
• Textile tube-type flexible sodium ion battery. The battery structure consists of a hollow Teflon tube as a
supporting substrate, a copper wire anode, a sodium foil for electrolyte, a flexible separator, a Prussian
blue graphene composite (PB@GO@NTC) cathode, and a shrinkable tube