In situ characterization of buckling dynamics in silicon microribbon on an elastomer substrate

Buckling of rigid thin films on elastomer substrates underlies the fabrication foundation of stretchable soft electronics. Here we demonstrate an optical approach to in situ characterize the buckling of silicon microribbon driven by releasing the pre-stretched poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate at a controllable strain rate. The method, based on quantitative differential interference microscopy, directly captures the space–time evolution of the surface topography at a frame rate of 100 fps in a large field of view of 50 × 195 um^2. The nucleation, propagation and stabilization of the buckled structure during the buckling and unbuckling processes are observed and quantified. Our experiment reveals that a sequence of partially buckled patterns are energetically stable to bridge the unbuckled and fully buckled states. This work opens a new experimental scheme for the research on stretchable soft electronics and provides new evidence for the theoretical study of the buckling dynamics.

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Recommended citation: Zeng, Z., Yu, H., Du, S., & Chen, X. (2021). In situ characterization of buckling dynamics in silicon microribbon on an elastomer substrate. Extreme Mechanics Letters, 101397.