Highly Stable Indium‐Gallium‐Zinc‐Oxide Thin‐Film Transistors on Deformable Softening Polymer Substrates

Flexible electronics are attracting great interest in healthcare, where devices such as thin‐film transistors (TFTs) on polymer substrates facilitate biomedical applications requiring complex circuits in soft packages. Consequently, a repeatable process to fabricate reliable, stable electronic components on flexible substrates is required. Here, thermoset thiol‐ene/acrylate shape memory polymer (SMP) substrates house indium‐gallium‐zinc‐oxide (IGZO) TFTs and logic circuits: resulting devices exhibit stable behavior after thermal annealing at 250 °C. Fabricated, annealed devices exhibit an average mobility of 15 ± 2.5 cm 2 V −1 s −1 and show stability after bending and soaking in aqueous media. TFTs on SMPs are studied after mechanical bending tests with radii of curvature of 5 mm for 10 4 cycles over a 4 h time period. Other TFTs are soaked in phosphate‐buffered saline solution at 37 °C for 1 week. Logic inverter circuits using IGZO TFTs on SMPs represent the ability to add complex circuitry onto thin film flexible electronics. This technology can enable a new generation of implantable devices for research in healthcare fields.