High-performance flexible BiCMOS electronics based on single-crystal Si nanomembrane

Abstract

Electronics: Microfabrication enables integrated silicon-based thin-film transistors Semiconductor-based thin-film electronics is an emerging field in modern electronics due to the advance in mechanical flexibility, yet the fabrication that is currently relied on the conventional technologies for rigid devices constrain the integration of functional devices on one chip. A team lead by Zhenqiang Ma at University of Wisconsin-Madison developed a single batch processing technique, which allowed them to print multiple transistors on a single piece of plastic substrate. The key step is to selectively dope single crystalline silicon nanomembranes using spatially controllable ion implantation. As a demonstration, integrated bipolar-complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor thin-film transistors with performance comparable to their rigid counterparts are built. The fabrication reported might prove to be an enabling technology for processing a broad range of flexible electronics with potential industrial adaptability.