Boffins at North Carolina State University might have stumbled upon a new method to churn out stretchable electronics – thanks to the development of silicon nanowire coils on a substrate. These coils can stretch to more than double their original length, and potentially opening up the door to incorporate stretchable electronic devices into clothing, implantable health-monitoring devices, and a host of other applications. This is a clearly different method from what others did, where they “buckled” electronic materials into wavy shapes that are stretchable similar to the bellows of an accordion, but maximum strains will happen at the peaks and valleys, and when a failure strain happens, the whole structure will fails. Initial tests of the new coiled silicon nanowires happen to be a whole lot more durable, but the challenge remains for them to integrate those coils on a stretchable substrate directly.
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