Imagine a day when you could twist your phone into a loop and pocket it without damage! Sounds crazy, right? Well, the day wouldn’t be that far away, for researchers (including a team from MIT) have got the right hints to make that stretch happen, thanks to the delaminated stickers which got the brains going. The secret was hidden in the stickers peeling from windows and finally the researchers understood that they could make use of this desquamation to specifically control the fabrication of stretchable electronics, eventually realizing the dream of manufacturing products with very high mechanical resistance.
In most applications, the developers thought of preventing delamination, for it normally hampers the adherence to a surface and it degrades the mechanical properties of a film. The actual intent was to comprehend the dynamics of blister formation. It was accidentally discovered that these blisters could in turn be used to help improve mechanical properties when applied to electronics.
It became clear that partially separating the wires from the surface in advance will reduce the risk of breakage even under repeated mechanical stress. In the future, integrating of stretchable electronics to clothing, surgical gloves and e-paper will become much easier. The researchers even have a module in place, where they can assess high pressure points and accordingly tune the elasticity. Also, materials like graphene which look brittle but are flexible and strong could find a severe role in electronic applications.
