FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS

Flexible electronics or Flextronics describes a circuit that are flexible and can bend and stretch, enabling significant versatility in applications. The common, rigid printed circuit boards are slowly being replaced by a thin ribbon of resilient, high-performance electronics. Flextronics employs a hybrid technology that mixes traditional electronics with flexible, highperformance electronics and new 3-D printing technology. The system incorporates ‘inks,’ which are based on metals, polymers and organic materials, to tie the system together electronically. Using this technology, a razor-thin silicon integrated circuit, and a few hundred nanometers thick is placed on a flexible, bendable or even foldable, plastic-like substrate material. To allow electronics to be bendable or stretchable after fabrication, liquid gallium alloys are used as an electrical interconnect material. While these liquid alloys typically oxidize within minutes and become essentially useless, but the effects of the oxidation has been dramatically reduced through the use of ionic species confined to the walls of microvascular channels within the flexible substrates.The result is thin, foldable material that allows the circuitry to fit into extremely tight spaces and even to be integrated into complex curved surfaces, such as an airplane’s wing, or even a person’s skin. Flextronics can bring significant advancement in various fields like packaging, medical, lighting and mainly in consumer electronics. In aircraft applications, the hybrid flexible system can be used to monitor stresses and strains and report this information through miniature embedded antennas to ground crews or a pilot. This can also be used in developing a device to monitor a person’s health. This involves a biosensor system that can measure heartbeat, hydration levels, sweat, temperature and other vital signs through miniature circuitry. The system would be embedded on a flexible wearable patch. In consumer electronics many developments are made and flexible or bendable phone are being manufactured. Recently LG has showcased their flexible TV which can even be rolled just like a newspaper. They showed off a working 18 inch version and is working increasing the screen size. It uses a special film instead of plastic as backing to allow screen to be rolled into a tube. Flextronics have potentially many applications and can transform future

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