Electronic devices advanced from heavy, bulky origins to smart, mobile appliances. The commercial landscape of today?s electronics
industry is dominated by microelectronics, best reflected by ultrahigh density integrated circuits on rigid silicon. A new trend in electronics
evolves from accompanying appliances to an imperceptible form, wearable as glasses, textiles and medical prostheses, directly adherent
to the skin, or inner organs like the heart and the brain, establishing a seamless link between living beings and electronic devices.
Flexibility, compliance, weight, and softness will be key metrics in next generation electronic appliances. Scientists currently explore the
potential of elastic and soft forms of electronics, but also of robots and energy harvesters. The last few years have seen an explosion of
such soft matter based demonstrators, so we are currently at the verge of witnessing the demonstration of truly complex bionic systems,
eventually similar to the ?machine-human? in the science fiction movie Metropolis or the sentient android Data in Star Trek. In the
presentation, a few areas of this new branch of soft matter science will be highlighted.
Forschungs-