Mechanics of nonbuckling interconnects with prestrain for stretchable electronics*

The performance of the flexibility and stretchability of flexible electronics depends on the mechanical structure design, for which a great progress has been made in past years. The use of prestrain in the substrate, causing the compression of the transferred interconnects, can provide high elastic stretchability. Recently, the nonbuckling interconnects have been designed, where thick bar replaces thin ribbon layout to yield scissor-like in-plane deformation instead of in- or out-of-plane buckling modes. The nonbuckling interconnect design achieves significantly enhanced stretchability. However, combined use of prestrain and nonbuckling interconnects has not been explored. This paper aims to study the mechanical behavior of nonbuckling interconnects bonded to the prestrained substrate analytically and numerically. It is found that larger prestrain, longer straight segment, and smaller arc radius yield smaller strain in the interconnects. On the other hand, larger prestrain can also cause larger strain in the interconnects after releasing the prestrain. Therefore, the optimization of the prestrain needs to be found to achieve favorable stretchability.

A RF Redundant TSV Interconnection for High Resistance Si Interposer

Through Silicon Via (TSV) technology is capable meeting effective, compact, high density, high integration, and high-performance requirements. In high-frequency applications, with the rapid development of 5G and millimeter-wave radar, the TSV interposer will become a competitive choice for radio frequency system-in-package (RF SIP) substrates. This paper presents a redundant TSV interconnect design for high resistivity Si interposers for millimeter-wave applications. To verify its feasibility, a set of test structures capable of working at millimeter waves are designed, which are composed of three pieces of CPW (coplanar waveguide) lines connected by single TSV, dual redundant TSV, and quad redundant TSV interconnects. First, HFSS software is used for modeling and simulation, then, a modified equivalent circuit model is established to analysis the effect of the redundant TSVs on the high-frequency transmission performance to solidify the HFSS based simulation. At the same time, a failure simulation was carried out and results prove that redundant TSV can still work normally at 44 GHz frequency when failure occurs. Using the developed TSV process, the sample is then fabricated and tested. Using L-2L de-embedding method to extract S-parameters of the TSV interconnection. The insertion loss of dual and quad redundant TSVs are 0.19 dB and 0.46 dB at 40 GHz, respectively.

Polymer-CMOS Hybrid Neural Probes for Large-Scale Neuro-Electronic Interfacing

Achieving a stable, long-term connection with millions of neurons within living organisms remains one of the dreams of neuroscience. Silicon shank based probes lead the field in terms of pure channel count. On the other hand, polymer neural probes offer superior biocompatibility, ruggedness and lower cost. This work tries to merge these technologies while exploring new electronic and interconnect design methods, ultimately yielding a prototype of a polymer-CMOS hybrid neural probe with a gold bump interconnect along with an electronic design based on bipolar transistor input devices, pseudo-capacitive AC coupling and in-pixel digitization.