Curvy surface conformal ultra-thin transfer printed Si optoelectronic penetrating microprobe arrays

Abstract

Soft circuits: silicon microprobe array made penetrating Silicon microprobe vertial array has now been made ultra-thin, flexible and suitable for soft tissue integration. A team led by Cunjiang Yu from University of Houston, USA designs an ultra-thin and flexible 3D penetrating microprobe array that is compatible with soft electronics and tissue interfacing and mapping. The microprobe array is fabricated via transfer printing of ultra-thin silicon circuits onto an ultra-thin polyimide support, followed by iron layer deposition, magnetic actuation and epoxy solidification to make and fix the perpendicular and penetrating probes. This work tackles the problems of the mechanical and geometric mismatch between the soft surfaces and relatively rigid electronic circuits with conventional semiconductor fabrication technologies. It will bring immediate interest in developing multi-functioning and bio-integrated applications.