Stretch-based kirigami structure with folding lines for stretchable electronics

Abstract

We propose a stretch-based kirigami structure with folding lines (referred to as a “kiri-origami” structure) and folding methods of the kiri-origami structure for stretchable electronic devices. The kiri-origami structures have the advantages that rigid electronic elements such as surface mount devices (SMDs) can be mounted and large-number-of-unit structures can be folded up. We achieved the folding-up of the kiri-origami structure using buffer structures and biaxial extension to remove the cause of distortion and effectively utilized tensile force for folding. Undesirable deformations, such as panel warpage and hinge torsion, could not be ignored when using materials and configurations as stretchable electronic substrates and affected the foldability of the kirigami structure. However, our folding method could accurately fold the hinges in this situation. Finally, as a demonstration, we fabricated a kiri-origami LED matrix display with more than 500 hinges. The results indicate that kiri-origami structures are feasible for creating stretchable electronic devices with rigid electronic elements and large-area structures.