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Flexible and tunable silicon photonic circuits on plastic substrates

Flexible microelectronics has shown tremendous promise in a broad spectrum of applications, especially those that cannot be addressed by conventional microelectronics in rigid materials and constructions1-3. These unconventional yet important applications range from flexible consumer electronics to conformal sensor arrays and biomedical devices. A recent successful paradigm shift in implementing flexible electronics is to physically transfer and bond highly integrated devices made in high-quality, crystalline semiconductor materials on to plastic materials4-8. Here we demonstrate a flexible form of silicon photonics on plastic substrates using the transfer-and-bond fabrication method. Photonic circuits including interferometers and resonators have been transferred onto flexible plastic substrates with preserved functionalities and performance. By mechanically deforming the flexible substrates, the optical characteristics of the devices can be tuned reversibly over a remarkably large range. The demonstration of the new flexible photonic system based on the silicon-on-plastic (SOP) material platform could open the door to a plethora of novel applications, including tunable photonics, optomechanical sensors and bio-mechanical and bio-photonic probes.