Controlled Spalling Technology

Wearable electronics are demanded in many applications. However, traditional semiconductor manufacturing is based on bulk wafers and it is very challenging to mass-producing flexible electronics. In the last decades, many technologies have been developed to address this challenge such as using flexible materials instead of silicon, using silicon on insulator surface and peeling off the top thin silicon films. Here, we review another promising technology for achieving flexible electronics – controlled spalling, which uses mechanical stress to facilitate peeling off thin film directly off a bulk silicon substrate. This technology is CMOS-compatible (where CMOS is complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) and can potentially achieve system-level wearable electronics integrating sensors, signal processing, and communicating units.