Won Mook Choi

Stretchable and Foldable Silicon Integrated Circuits

We have developed a simple approach to high-performance, stretchable, and foldable integrated circuits. The systems integrate inorganic electronic materials, including aligned arrays of nanoribbons of single crystalline silicon, with ultrathin plastic and elastomeric substrates. The designs combine multilayer neutral mechanical plane layouts and “wavy” structural configurations in silicon complementary logic gates, ring oscillators, and differential amplifiers. We performed three-dimensional analytical and computational modeling of the mechanics and the electronic behaviors of these integrated circuits. Collectively, the results represent routes to devices, such as personal health monitors and other biomedical devices, that require extreme mechanical deformations during installation/use and electronic properties approaching those of conventional systems built on brittle semiconductor wafers.

A hemispherical electronic eye camera based on compressible silicon optoelectronics

The human eye is a remarkable imaging device, with many attractive design features. Prominent among these is a hemispherical detector geometry, similar to that found in many other biological systems, that enables a wide field of view and low aberrations with simple, few-component imaging optics. This type of configuration is extremely difficult to achieve using established optoelectronics technologies, owing to the intrinsically planar nature of the patterning, deposition, etching, materials growth and doping methods that exist for fabricating such systems. Here we report strategies that avoid these limitations, and implement them to yield high-performance, hemispherical electronic eye cameras based on single-crystalline silicon. The approach uses wafer-scale optoelectronics formed in unusual, two-dimensionally compressible configurations and elastomeric transfer elements capable of transforming the planar layouts in which the systems are initially fabricated into hemispherical geometries for their final implementation. In a general sense, these methods, taken together with our theoretical analyses of their associated mechanics, provide practical routes for integrating well-developed planar device technologies onto the surfaces of complex curvilinear objects, suitable for diverse applications that cannot be addressed by conventional means.

Materials and noncoplanar mesh designs for integrated circuits with linear elastic responses to extreme mechanical deformations

Electronic systems that offer elastic mechanical responses to high-strain deformations are of growing interest because of their ability to enable new biomedical devices and other applications whose requirements are impossible to satisfy with conventional wafer-based technologies or even with those that offer simple bendability. This article introduces materials and mechanical design strategies for classes of electronic circuits that offer extremely high stretchability, enabling them to accommodate even demanding configurations such as corkscrew twists with tight pitch (e.g., 90° in ≈1 cm) and linear stretching to “rubber-band” levels of strain (e.g., up to ≈140%). The use of single crystalline silicon nanomaterials for the semiconductor provides performance in stretchable complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits approaching that of conventional devices with comparable feature sizes formed on silicon wafers. Comprehensive theoretical studies of the mechanics reveal the way in which the structural designs enable these extreme mechanical properties without fracturing the intrinsically brittle active materials or even inducing significant changes in their electrical properties. The results, as demonstrated through electrical measurements of arrays of transistors, CMOS inverters, ring oscillators, and differential amplifiers, suggest a valuable route to high-performance stretchable electronics.

Semiconductor Wires and Ribbons for High- Performance Flexible Electronics

This article reviews the properties, fabrication and assembly of inorganic semiconductor materials that can be used as active building blocks to form high-performance transistors and circuits for flexible and bendable large-area electronics. Obtaining high performance on low temperature polymeric substrates represents a technical challenge for macroelectronics. Therefore, the fabrication of high quality inorganic materials in the form of wires, ribbons, membranes, sheets, and bars formed by bottom-up and top-down approaches, and the assembly strategies used to deposit these thin films onto plastic substrates will be emphasized. Substantial progress has been made in creating inorganic semiconducting materials that are stretchable and bendable, and the description of the mechanics of these form factors will be presented, including circuits in three-dimensional layouts. Finally, future directions and promising areas of research will be described.

Fully Rollable Transparent Nanogenerators Based on Graphene Electrodes

[*] Prof. S.-W. Kim, H.-K. Park, J.-S. Seo School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering SKKU Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology (SAINT) Center for Human Interface Nanotechnology (HINT) Sungkyunkwan University Suwon, 440-746 (Republic of Korea) E-mail: kimsw1@skku.edu Dr. J.-Y. Choi, Dr. D. Choi, Dr. W. M. Choi, H.-J. Shin, Dr. J. Park, S.-M. Yoon, Dr. S. Y. Lee, Dr. J. M. Kim Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology Yongin, Gyeonggi, 446-712 (Republic of Korea) E-mail: jaeyoung88.choi@samsung.com M.-Y. Choi School of Advanced Materials and System Engineering Kumoh National Institute of Technology Gumi, Gyeongbuk, 730-701 (Republic of Korea)

Synthesis of a highly conductive and large surface area graphene oxide hydrogel and its use in a supercapacitor

In this report, we describe the structure of a robust and highly conductive 3D graphene oxide hydrogel. The reduced graphene oxide hydrogel or rGH is fabricated by a crosslinking reaction with ethylene diamine followed by a hydrazine reduction. The material showed a high electrical conductivity of 1351 S m−1 and a specific surface area of 745 m2 g−1 with 10.3 MPa break strength. When used as electrodes for a supercapacitor, it showed a high specific capacitance of 232 F g−1.

Direct Growth of Semiconducting Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Array

By introducing the UV beam into our homemade chemical vapor deposition system, we had obtained a well aligned SWNT array on an ST-cut quartz substrate. After transfer onto a SiO(2)/Si substrate, the SWNT array was detected by Raman spectroscopy and electrical measurement, which showed that over 95% of the SWNTs were semiconducting ones. It is proposed that the selection process took place at the very beginning of the SWNT formation rather than destroying the metallic SWNTs after growth. This approach has solved one of the most important problems in SWNT application.

Synthesis of Multilayer Graphene Balls by Carbon Segregation from Nickel Nanoparticles

Three-dimensional (3D) structured graphene is a material of great interest due to its diverse applications in electronics, catalytic electrodes, and sensors. However, the preparation of 3D structured graphene is still challenging. Here, we report the fabrication of multilayer graphene balls (GBs) by template-directed carbon segregation using nickel nanoparticles (Ni-NPs) as template materials. To maintain the ball shape of the template Ni-NPs, we used a carburization process using polyol solution as the carbon source and a thermal annealing process to synthesize graphene layers via carbon segregation on the outer surface of the Ni-NPs. The resulting GBs were hollow structures composed of multilayer graphene after the removal of core Ni-NPs, and the thickness of the graphene layers and the size of GBs were tunable by controlling the graphene synthesis conditions. X-ray diffraction analysis and in situ transmission electron microscope characterization revealed that carbon atoms diffused effectively into the Ni-NPs during the carburization step, and that the diffused carbon atoms in Ni-NPs segregated and successfully formed a graphene layer on the surface of the Ni-NPs during thermal annealing. We also performed further heat treatment at high temperature to improve the quality of the graphene layer, resulting in highly crystalline GBs. The unique hollow GBs synthesized here will be useful as excellent high-rate electrode materials for electrochemical lithium storage devices.

An analytical study of two-dimensional buckling of thin films on compliant substrates

A stiff thin film on a heated compliant substrate may buckle when the system is cooled due to the thermal expansion mismatch between the film and substrate. Highly ordered and disordered herringbone patterns (wavy structures) then emerge as the system continues to cool. We have established an analytic approach to study one-dimensional, checkerboard, and ordered herringbone buckling patterns. The analytical approach gives the buckle wave length and amplitude in terms of the thin film and substrate elastic properties, thin film thickness, and the thermal strain. It is shown that the herringbone mode has the lowest energy, which explains why this mode is frequently observed in experiments. These classes of materials might be interesting as a route to high performance electronics with full, two-dimensional stretchability.

Complementary metal oxide silicon integrated circuits incorporating monolithically integrated stretchable wavy interconnects

Stretchable complementary metal oxide silicon circuits consisting of ultrathin active devices mechanically and electrically connected by narrow metal lines and polymer bridging structures are presented. This layout—together with designs that locate the neutral mechanical plane near the critical circuit layers—yields strain independent electrical performance and realistic paths to circuit integration. A typical implementation reduces the strain in the silicon to less than ∼0.04% for applied strains of ∼10%. Mechanical and electrical modeling and experimental characterization reveal the underlying physics of these systems.