Adhesion-governed buckling of thin-film electronics on soft tissues

• Adhesion-governed buckling physics for thin-film on elastomer.
• The transitions between buckling modes are predicted analytically.
• Mechanics discussed in the context of bio-integrated electronics applications.

Stretchable/flexible electronics has attracted great interest and attention due to its potentially broad applications in bio-compatible systems. One class of these ultra-thin electronic systems has found promising and important utilities in bio-integrated monitoring and therapeutic devices. These devices can conform to the surfaces of soft bio-tissues such as the epidermis, the epicardium, and the brain to provide portable healthcare functionalities. Upon contractions of the soft tissues, the electronics undergoes compression and buckles into various modes, depending on the stiffness of the tissue and the strength of the interfacial adhesion. These buckling modes result in different kinds of interfacial delamination and shapes of the deformed electronics, which are very important to the proper functioning of the bio-electronic devices. In this paper, detailed buckling mechanics of these thin-film electronics on elastomeric substrates is studied. The analytical results, validated by experiments, provide a very convenient tool for predicting peak strain in the electronics and the intactness of the interface under various conditions.