Abstract：Strechable electronics can offer the performance of conventional wafer-based devices, and on top of that, they are capable of deforming to arbitrary shapes. This resulting technology has enabled many novel applications such as wearable electronics and epidermal electronics. The challenge in the development of stretchable electronics is the mismatch between the hard inorganic semiconductor materials (e.g., silicon) and the ductility requirements in the applications. One effective strategy to overcome this mismatch is to exploit stretchable design in new structure layouts bonded to compliant substrates at strategic locations. Among the several stretchable designs, the three typical ones newly developed since 2013 have drawn much attention, which are fractal bridge-island design, origami design and kirigami design. This paper reviews the advances on the mechanics of these three typical stretchable designs for stretchable electronics. Mechanics models and their comparisons with experiments and finite element simulations are overviewed to illustrate the key roles of mechanics in the development of stretchable electronics.
2016, Vol. 37 
