Plastic Inorganic Semiconductors for Flexible Electronics

Abstract

Featured with bendability and deformability, smartness and lightness, flexible materials and devices have wide applications in electronics, optoelectronics, and energy utilization. The key for flexible electronics is the integration of flexibility and decent electrical performance of semiconductors. It has long been realized that high-performance inorganic semiconductors are brittle, and the thinning-down-induced flexibility does not change the intrinsic brittleness. This inconvenient fact severely restricts the fabrication and service of inorganic semiconductors in flexible and deformable electronics. By contrast, flexible and soft polymers can be readily deformed but behave poorly in terms of electrical properties. Recently, Ag 2 S was discovered as the room-temperature ductile inorganic semiconductor. The intrinsic flexibility and plasticity of Ag 2 S are attributed to multicentered chemical bonding and solid linkage among easy slip planes. Furthermore, the electrical and thermoelectric properties of Ag 2 S can be readily optimized by Se/Te alloying while the ductility is maintained, giving birth to a high-efficiency full inorganic flexible thermoelectric device. This chapter briefly reviews this big discovery, relevant backgrounds, and research advances and tries to demonstrate a clear structure-performance correlation between crystal structure/chemical bonding and mechanical/electrical properties.