Performance Assessment of Stretchable Interconnects for Flexible Electronic Systems

Flexible electronic (FE) systems have been at the forefront of rapidly transforming and fast-growing e-industries. With upcoming enhanced technologies, rigid devices are now been replaced with emerging ultra-thin, flexible, and portable systems. The hardwiring in on-boards is also getting updated with stretchable interconnect. The stretchable interconnects are becoming one of the most eminent parts of FE systems and need high research attention. Correspondingly, to attain efficient stretchable interconnects performance analyses such as its varying structures, stretchability, parasitic impedance extraction, power, and delay are computed in this work. Five different stretchable interconnect structures viz, straight (St), zigzag (Zz), serpentine (Sp), horseshoe (Hs), and rectangular (Rt) have been considered. The different interconnect geometries are parameterized to varying strain and stress effects on ANSYS workbench. For all the considered geometries, their RLC parasitics are extracted using ANSYS Q3D tool. Further, the signal integrity and performance of all the stretchable interconnect structures have been analyzed at varying frequencies using Cadence Virtuoso EDA tool.