Electronic skin: architecture and components

Conceptual hardware architecture of skin-like circuits is described. An elastomeric skin carries rigid islands on which active subcircuits are made. The subcircuit islands are interconnected by stretchable metallization. We concentrate on recent advances in stretchable thin-film conductors, by covering their construction, evaluation, and laboratory and theoretical analysis. Reversibly stretchable conductors with electrically-critical strains ranging from 10% to 100% have been made. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.