Technical Articles From University of California Berkeley

Flexible Hybrid Electronics: Direct Interfacing of Soft and Hard Electronics for Wearable Health Monitoring

Aug 18, 2021 | Yasser Khan, Mohit Garg, Qiong Gui, Mark Schadt, Abhinav Gaikwad, Donggeon Han, Natasha A. D. Yamamoto, Paul Hart, Robert Welte, William Wilson, Steve Czarnecki, Mark Poliks, Zhanpeng Jin, Kanad Ghose, Frank Egitto, James Turner, and Ana C. Arias

The interfacing of soft and hard electronics is a key challenge for flexible hybrid electronics. Currently, a multisubstrate approach is employed, where soft and hard devices are fabricated or assembled on separate substrates, and bonded or interfaced using connectors; this hinders the flexibility of the device and is prone to interconnect issues. Here, a single substrate interfacing approach is reported, where soft devices, i.e., sensors, are directly printed on Kapton polyimide substrates that are widely used for fabricating flexible printed circuit boards (FPCBs)....