EDITORIAL pubs.acs.org/ac
Bendable Electronics and Innovation Centers
T
his Editorial is prompted by a recent article in the Economist (March 12, 2011) entitled “A Shapely Future for Circuits”. The Economist article discusses research by a variety of workers on flexible circuits. Featured is work by John Rogers, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty member in the Departments of Chemistry and of Materials Science and Engineering and a full-time member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. The grand idea that Rogers has developed is to design silicon-based circuitry that is bendable (flexible). This would enable incorporation of circuitry into items that can be worn, as an example. Rogers pulls this idea off by making ultrathin (∼100 nm) single crystal silicon wafers; silicon this thin has a significant degree of flexibility. Then, the small, bendable silicon wafers are mounted on a sticky, prestretched rubbery material that, when released, produces a herringbone pattern in which the wafers bend but do not break. The article “Biaxially Stretchable “Wavy” Silicon Nanomembranes” (Nano Lett. 2007, 7, 1655 1663) provides a study of the bending process. Another approach to bendable silicon is to make tiny islands of thicker, rigid silicon that are connected together with wires that provide the inter-island flexibility. The flexible attribute prompts notions of wearing sensors in your clothes (or uniform)—assuming of course that you can incorporate a suitably sensitive and selective sensor as part of the circuitry. Part of Rogers’s work on bendable circuitry was done at the Beckman Institute. I’ve gained familiarity with this Institute by having served on its External Advisory Committee for several years. The focus of “The Beckman”, as it is locally called, is to provide an environment aimed at collaborative research and at research that leads to societally useful outcomes. The Beckman is a good example of how to organize and promote collaboration. A faculty member in Department X is provided research space in the 131,000 square foot building and gains access to specialty equipment, an infrastructure, staff, and rubs elbows with other faculty with proximate interests, often from another Department, Y. The faculty normally do not leave their departments entirely and retain a departmental space base and department teaching duties. The Beckman just provides another outlet for collaborations between faculty from different departments (and disciplines). The Beckman Institute idea, in different forms, can be found at other universities in the U.S. I think an essentiality of it as a useful model is that a faculty researcher can engage in a new research venture and collaborate with others (including collaboration between students!) without irreversibly abandoning the roots of their teaching and disciplinary colleagues. The U.S. research community treasures innovation, and this is one path towards promoting it while maintaining the cores of disciplinary knowledge and teaching.
Published: April 05, 2011 r 2011 American Chemical Society
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dx.doi.org/10.1021/ac200805h | Anal. Chem. 2011, 83, 3223–3223
