Nanomembranes and soft fabrication methods for high performance, low cost energy technologies

The production of integrated electronic circuits provides examples of the most advanced fabrication and assembly approaches that are generally characterized by large-scale integration of high-performance compact semiconductor elements that rely on rigid and essentially planar form factors. New methods of fabricating semiconductor membranes of nanoscale thickness with intrinsic mechanical flexible features are beginning to provide a set of means to lift these constraints by engendering deformable, three-dimensional device configurations that are difficult to achieve with bulkscale materials while retaining capacities for high (or altogether new forms of) electronic and/or optoelectronic performance. Together with enabling means of deterministic assembly realized via the advancing technology of transferprinting, these light-weight nanomembrane elements can be distributed over large areas on a soft, bendable, and even biocompatible secondary substrates with high throughput and yields to realize interesting new functionalities in technology. Exemplary cases include: large-area integrated electro-optical systems laminated onto curvilinear or other 3-D surfaces for use in sensing and imaging with capacities for accommodating demanding forms of mechanical flexure; and unconventional hybrid systems for lighting and photovoltaic energy conversion that provide a potentially transformational approach to supplant current technologies with high performance, low cost alternatives. Taken together, the results of recent research efforts illustrate important opportunities for exploiting advances in materials in synergy with physical means of patterning, fabrication and assembly. In this review, we explore several exemplary applications taken from this work, and specifically highlight scalable approaches to high performance integrated systems for low cost energy technologies.