Soft Materials & Flexible Electronics

        Stretchable/flexible electronics has attracted tremendous attention in the past two to three decades due to the combination of its superior mechanical attributes and electrical performance. It can be applied in places that are not accessible by traditional rigid printed circuit boards (PCBs), such as seamless integration with soft tissues and organs of human body for health care, bioinspired curvilinear imagers, and artificial skins that mimic the mechanical and electrical properties of natural skin. Among all the exciting applications, wearable electronics represents one of the most important, as it is the most accessible to people, and can be integrated onto the surface of human body to provide many useful functions, including physical activity tracking, health monitoring, drug delivery, human-computer interface, and virtual/augmented reality. To achieve excellent mechanical compliance and electrical performance simultaneously, integration techniques that combine stretchable substrates, interconnects, and hard commercial chip components were developed, including soft microfluidic assemblies, solderable and stretchable platforms, and liquid metal (LM)–based systems.

        Our primary research interests include experimental and theoretical study of stretchable electronic, adhesion adjustment of transfer printing protocol on compliant substrates, and integration strategies for hard/soft materials. The goal is to develop high performance materials and devices of wide application, and to advance our understanding of their fundamental physics and mechanics.