Stretchable electronic circuits and systems will be critical for future wearable devices and smart textiles, where existing fabrication approaches severely limit conformal deformation. This is especially true for wearable sensors and actuators, conformable electronic skins and textiles, soft robots, and emerging physical human-machine interfaces. In this talk, I present a survey of our ongoing research leveraging printed liquid metal paste materials to build stretchable electrical interconnects between electronic components. This approach allows us to build multi-layer "stretchable PCBs," and it provides the ability to print sensors and passives using the same material. I will also describe our recent work developing methods for the heterogeneous integration of IC-based sensors into new biosensor and bioelectronic systems.
Prior to joining Oregon State in 2014, Matt Johnston was founder of Bialanx, developing a portable IC-based platform for label-free biosensing applications. He was previously a graduate student and postdoc with the Bioelectronic Systems Lab at Columbia University, where his research focused on monolithic integration of piezoelectric materials and devices with CMOS integrated circuit substrates.
His research focuses on the integration of sensors and CMOS integrated circuits, lab-on-CMOS platforms, bioelectronics, stretchable circuits and sensor systems, and bio-energy harvesting. He is currently an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems and of the IEEE Open Journal of Circuits and Systems.