Buckled and wavy ribbons of GaAs for high-performance electronics on elastomeric substrates

An approach to form buckled and wavy GaAs ribbons onto or embedded in poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) elastomeric substrates is described. The GaAs ribbon based MESFETs are designed with special geometries that provide bendability, mechanical stretchability to levels of strain that exceed the intrinsic yield points of GaAs itself. The resulting type of stretchable, high-performance electronic systems can provide extremely high levels of bendability and the capacity to integrate conformally with curvilinear surfaces. The geometrical configurations of these ribbons depend on the levels of prestrains used in the fabrication, the strength of interactions between the PDMS and ribbons, and on the thicknesses and types of materials used. Buckled and wavy ribbons of GaAs multilayer stacks and fully formed MESFET devices show large levels of compressibility/stretchability, because of the ability of their geometries to adjust in a manner that can accommodate applied strains without transferring those strains to the materials themselves.