Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2019
Stretchable electronics fabrication generally relies on fine-tuning adhesion forces, putting some restrictions on what the carrier layer can be. In contrast to adhesion, mechanical tangling makes more kinds of carrier materials available. Antibacterial, conductive, heat-responsive and other functions can be brought in by fiber networks as long as they are compatible with the highly selective silicon etch process. Mechanical grippers can also bring electronic contacts from one side of a mesh to the other, which is difficult to do on continuous thin films of other soft materials like silicone or polyimide. Our solution uses mechanical strain to produce large arrays of redundant grippers from planar thin-film designs.