Abstract

Current metal film-based electronics, while sensitive to external stretching, typically fail via uncontrolled cracking under a relatively small strain (~30%), which restricts their practical applications. To address this, here we report a design approach inspired by the stereocilia bundles of a cochlea that uses a hierarchical assembly of interfacial nanowires to retard penetrating cracking. This structured surface outperforms its flat counterparts in stretchability (130% versus 30% tolerable strain) and maintains high sensitivity (minimum detection of 0.005% strain) in response to external stimuli such as sounds and mechanical forces. The enlarged stretchability is attributed to the two-stage cracking process induced by the synergy of micro-voids and nano-voids. In-situ observation confirms that at low strains micro-voids between nanowire clusters guide the process of crack growth, whereas at large strains new cracks are randomly initiated from nano-voids among individual nanowires.

Details

Title
Micro-/nano-voids guided two-stage film cracking on bioinspired assemblies for high-performance electronics
Author
Miao, Weining 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Yao, Yuxing 2 ; Zhang, Zhiwei 3 ; Ma, Chunping 3 ; Li, Shengzhe 4 ; Tang, Jiayue 5 ; Liu, He 6 ; Liu, Zemin 6 ; Wang, Dianyu 7 ; Camburn, Michael A 8 ; Jen-Chun, Fang 8 ; Ruiran Hao 5 ; Fang, Xinyu 8 ; Zheng, Shuang 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Hu, Nan 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Wang, Xiaoguang 8 

1  Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 
2  Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA 
3  Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA 
4  Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK 
5  Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 
6  University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 
7  College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun, China 
8  William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA 
Pages
1-8
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Aug 2019
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11803-8
ProQuest document ID
2281083141
Copyright
© 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.