We've seen a few examples of OLEDs being used to create flexible displays but they are much slower than their unbending silicon rivals. With conductive ink and thread it is possible to make wearable technology but again the silicon components remain solid and immobile. Researchers in Saudi Arabia have been working on flexible technology which retains the speed of silicon transistors but is able to flex up to 0.5 mm which may sound large until you remember the size of a transistor. They have created these FinFETs by putting a thin layer of a polymer on top of the material they will be etching the transistors into and gently removing the polymer once the process has completed. This results in a FinFET which retains the power saving and performance attributes common to the 3D transistor but with the ability to bend. This won't be marketed for a while yet but in the mean time read all about it on Nanotechweb.
"Researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudia Arabia are continuing with their experiments to transform traditional rigid electronic wafers made from silicon into mechanically flexible and transparent ones."
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What you are describing
What you are describing happens with all IC manufacturing, as the photoresist is a Palomar like substance, what are they doping the semiconductor material with to allow it to become flexible, or are they using a substrate that already has the flexible properties in the substrate material to begin with, and they are etching circuits into the flexible material.
“flex up to 0.5 mm which may sound [large] until you remember the size of a transistor”
did you not mean may sound small, but relative to the size of the transistors is a huge amount of flex.
Does the process have an inherent ability to allow any device manufactured using this technique, to be more resistant the thermal expansion, and physical shock, and can it allow devices to be run hotter/faster and not degrade as quickly?
You would need to spend the
You would need to spend the $35 to gain access to the full research paper at ACS Nano to get more info, only the abstract was free. I did indeed mean small as there are some readers who might not immediately make the mental jump from physical movement measurement to nanoscale transistors.