Flexibility-Aware System-on-Polymer (SoP): Concept to Prototype

Abstract

Mechanically flexible, printed, and stretchable electronics are gaining momentum. While rapid advancement is well underway at the device and circuit levels, researchers have yet to envision the system design in a flexible form. This paper introduces the concept of System-on-Polymer (SoP) based on flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) to combine the advantages of flexible electronics and traditional silicon technology. First, we formally define flexibility as a new design metric in addition to existing power, performance, and area metrics. Then, we present a novel optimization approach to place rigid components onto a flexible substrate while minimizing the loss in flexibility. We show that the optimal placement leads to as much as 5.7 $\times$ enhancement in flexibility compared to a naïve placement. We confirm the accuracy of our models and optimization framework using a finite element method (FEM) simulator. Finally, we demonstrate the SoP concept using a concrete hardware prototype, and discuss the major challenges in the architecture and design of SoPs.