Fabrication of Single Crystal Silicon Micro-/Nanowires and transferring them to Flexible Substrates

This work describes the method to fabricate micro-structured single-crystal Si wires and ribbons from silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers using “topdown” fabrication strategy. The ordered wires of Si have been successfully transferred to flexible PDMS substrates. The processing and combining stiff and brittle materials like Si with highly compliant substrates such as PDMS is a challenging task. The result presented here is an important milestone for fabricating electronic circuits over large and ultra flexible substrates.