Huang Yunxiang, Li Gen, Bai Tianyu, Shin Yieljae, Wang Xiaoxin, More Alexander Ian, Boucher Pierre, Chandrasekaran Chandramouli, Liu Jifeng, Fang Hui
Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, MA, 02118, USA.
Npj Flex Electron. 2024;8. doi: 10.1038/s41528-024-00344-w. Epub 2024 Oct 1.
The integration of flexible electronics and photonics has the potential to create revolutionary technologies, yet it has been challenging to marry electronic and photonic components on a single polymer device, especially through high-volume manufacturing. Here, we present a robust, chiplet-level heterogeneous integration of polymer-based circuits (CHIP), where several post-fabricated, ultrathin, polymer electronic, and optoelectronic chiplets are vertically bonded into one single chip at room temperature and then shaped into application-specific form factors with monolithic Input/Output (I/O). As a demonstration, we applied this process and developed a flexible 3D-integrated optrode with high-density arrays of microelectrodes for electrical recording and micro light-emitting diodes (μLEDs) for optogenetic stimulation while with unprecedented integration of additional temperature sensors for bio-safe operations and shielding designs for optoelectronic artifact prevention. Besides achieving simple, high-yield, and scalable 3D integration of much-needed functionalities, CHIP also enables double-sided area utilization and miniaturization of connection I/O. Systematic device characterization demonstrated the successfulness of this scheme and also revealed frequency-dependent origins of optoelectronic artifacts in flexible 3D-integrated optrodes. In addition to enabling excellent manufacturability and scalability, we envision CHIP to be generally applicable to numerous polymer-based devices to achieve wide-ranging applications.
柔性电子学与光子学的集成有潜力创造出革命性技术，但要在单个聚合物器件上集成电子和光子组件一直具有挑战性，尤其是通过大规模制造来实现。在此，我们展示了一种基于聚合物电路的稳健的小芯片级异质集成（CHIP），其中几个后制造的超薄聚合物电子和光电子小芯片在室温下垂直键合到单个芯片中，然后通过单片输入/输出（I/O）形成特定应用的外形尺寸。作为演示，我们应用此工艺开发了一种柔性3D集成光电极，它具有用于电记录的高密度微电极阵列和用于光遗传学刺激的微发光二极管（μLED），同时还前所未有地集成了用于生物安全操作的额外温度传感器以及用于防止光电子伪影的屏蔽设计。除了实现急需功能的简单、高产和可扩展的3D集成外，CHIP还实现了双面面积利用和连接I/O的小型化。系统的器件表征证明了该方案的成功，并揭示了柔性3D集成光电极中光电子伪影的频率依赖性起源。除了具有出色的可制造性和可扩展性外，我们设想CHIP可普遍应用于众多基于聚合物的器件，以实现广泛的应用。
