Flexible electronic devices

Chapter 9 Flexible Electronic Devices Based on Polymers 327... 

Recently, solid-state or quasi-solid-state electrolytes have received increasing attention since they can greatly promote the development of ESs for portable electronics, wearable electronics, printable electronics, microelectronics, and especially flexible electronic devices. 

A. Goyal, Semiconductor-based, Large-Area, Flexible Electronic Devices, US Patent 7906229, March 15 (2011). 

A. Goyal., 100 <100>or45 degrees-rotated 100 <100>, semiconductor-based, large-area, flexible, electronic devices, US Patent 8178221, May 15 (2012). 

Whereas inorganic polycrystalline or amorphous silicon technologies are well established for the realization of TFTs, high process temperatures [3-5] are required during their production and are one of the reasons for a limited compatibility with flexible plastic substrates. Here, organic field-effect transistors (OFFTs) are of special interest since the usual production at low temperature allows for the realization of flexible electronic devices, while still being comparably inexpensive. 

Flexible electronic devices are increasingly capturing the attention of researchers in radio frequency (RF) technologies and metamaterials physics, and are not limited to electronics applications such as light emitting diodes (7). These devices are driven by the pliable, conformal, and stretchable characteristics of elastomeric substrates [7-13], Examples of RF and terahertz devices demonstrated on flexible device platforms include curved antennas [12], millimeter-wave patch flexible antennas and coupled line filters [13], coplanar waveguide antenna [14], stretchable microfluidic RF antenna [15], frequency selective surfaces and metamaterials [8], microwave frequency switches [16], tunable metamaterials [17, 18], and tunable dielectric and magnetic properties [10]. 

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