Stiff subcircuit islands of diamondlike carbon for stretchable electronics

Stretchable electronics on elastomeric substrates requires fragile and brittle device materials to be placed on stiff, mechanical distinct subcircuit islands. We deposited a diamondlike carbon (DLC) film at room temperature on a silicone substrate by pulsed laser ablation, and patterned the film into an array of 200×200μm2 islands. When the substrate was uniaxially stretched to a strain of 25%, the islands remained adherent to the substrate and only deformed by ∼5%, while the exposed substrate stretched by more than 30%. A row of 11 DLC islands interconnected with gold stretchable metallization maintained end-to-end electrical conduction during a mechanical cycle to 20% tensile strain. This demonstration of electrically interconnected stiff islands on silicone illustrates two important steps toward fully integrated, elastically stretchable electronics.