Harnessing Multiple Surface Deformation Modes for Switchable Conductivity Surfaces

Surface deformation modes, such as wrinkling, creasing, and cracking, enable a plethora of surface morphologies under mechanical loading, which have been widely exploited to provide flexibility and stretchability to electronic devices. As each phenomenon offers a distinct set of potential advantages, controlling the types and spatial locations of deformation modes is key for their successful application. In this study, we demonstrate a method to simultaneously harness multiple surface deformation modes—wrinkles, creases, and cracks—in patterned multilayer films. The wrinkling of metal-coated stiff patterned films provides flexibility and stretchability, while the reversible formation of creases in the intervening regions of the bare elastomer is used to template the formation of patterned cracks in the metal. While conventional cracks can be difficult to precisely control, the patterned cracks demonstrated here remain straight over long distances and show tunable lateral spacings from hundreds of micrometers to centimeters. Finally, the reversible opening and closing of these cracks under mechanical loading provides mechanically gated electrical switches with small and tunable critical switching strains of 0.05–0.18 and high on/off ratios of >107, enabling the preparation of mechanical NAND and NOR logic gates each composed of multiple patterned switches on a single elastomer surface.