Extreme Mechanics Letters 15 (2017) 44–50

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Extreme Mechanics Letters

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eml

Optimization of compound serpentine–spiral structure for

ultra-stretchable electronics
Mutee U. Rehman, Jhonathan P. Rojas *
Electrical Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia

article info a b s t r a c t
Article history: Stretchable electronics is a rising technology, promising to replace the conventional, brittle and rigid
Received 27 January 2017 electronics for applications that demand mechanical compliance to irregular, complex and mobile shapes.
Received in revised form 4 April 2017 Several approaches have been proposed to find an optimum balance between electrical and mechanical
Accepted 22 May 2017
characteristics. These include finding new flexible electronic materials, integrating both organic and
Available online 30 May 2017
inorganic materials or incorporating structural modifications to conventional materials, thus achieving
flexibility and stretchability. Previously, the use of spiral-based structures made entirely out of silicon,
Keywords:
Stretchable electronics a well-mature and high-performing material, has been proposed as a platform for ultra-stretchable
Flexible electronics electronic applications. In this paper we have demonstrated the use of spiral-based compound, fractal-
Serpentine structure inspired structures to optimize and greatly reduce the stress and strain distribution along them. The
Spiral structure integration of double-arm spirals with variants of serpentine and horseshoe structures has been con-
Finite element analysis sidered and their mechanical response to an applied deformation has been performed through finite
element analysis (FEA). The proposed compound structures provide outstanding stretching capabilities
and demonstrate up to ∼55% reduction in stress/strain, as well as a more uniform distribution as com-
pared to the original, un-optimized spiral-based structure. These results show the remarkable potential of
combining structures to optimize their mechanical behavior, thus accomplishing more robust platforms
that will leverage the development of stretchable electronics.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction stretch or flex. This makes conventional electronics inherently in-

With the continuous advancement of electronic systems, new
potential and innovative areas of engineering have emerged to
cover an exciting range of novel applications from bio-integrated
devices and wearable technologies to smart cybernetics and soft-
robotics, or self-powered sensor networks as enablers of the
Internet-of-Everything (IoE) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) [1–8].
Along with this surge of application areas, electronic systems are
being presented with tough challenges in terms of new mechanical
requirements and demands. For example, bio-integrated devices
and wearable electronics, which deal with complex, mobile, soft,
flexible and stretchable biological systems, demand the devices
to be conformal to irregular surfaces and to be able to exhibit
certain degree of flexibility and stretchability while retaining the
high electrical performance of conventional electronics, thus still
enabling fast and efficient processing of high amount of informa-
tion [9–11]. Unluckily, conventional electronics, mostly based on
silicon, are rigid and brittle in nature, thus lacking the ability to
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: g201404680@kfupm.edu.sa (M.U. Rehman),
jprojas@kfupm.edu.sa (J.P. Rojas).
compatible with all these applications where mechanical compli-
ance is not only useful but essential. Research work is underway to
overcome such challenges, finding innovative ways to achieve both
high electrical and mechanical performance. A number of ground-
breaking ideas have been proposed, where two main approaches
can be identified; (I) the use of unconventional materials with
conventional electric designs, or (II) use of novel strategies and
structures to adapt conventional electronics with new mechanical
characteristics [10,12–15].
In relation to unconventional materials, organic or polymeric
materials are the natural choice due to their excellent mechani-
cal characteristics, giving birth to the notion of flexible, organic
electronics, which can provide great flexibility and even stretch-
ability, in contrast to conventionally brittle, inorganic-based de-
vices [10,16–18]. However, their range of applications is, at the
moment, limited due to their lower electrical performance, evi-
dently lower compared to silicon, and inability to handle high tem-
perature processing [19,20]. Alternatively, 1D structures, such as
nanowires or carbon nanotubes, and 2D atomic structures, such as
graphene or transition metal dichalcogenide nanosheets (TMDC),
are still far from achieving the integration level and layout com-
plexity of current silicon-based electronics despite their excellent
potential electronic properties [20].

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eml.2017.05.004
2352-4316/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 M.U. Rehman, J.P. Rojas / Extreme Mechanics Letters 15 (2017) 44–50
The alternative second approach, on the other hand, exploits the
fact that the flexural rigidity of most stiff materials can be dras-
tically reduced by reducing their thickness down to microscopic
or nanoscopic features, thus becoming flexible and able to bend to
even very small radii [21]. For example, silicon, which is brittle and
rigid in nature, becomes flexible when its thickness is reduced to
micro- or nanoscale, thus enabling devices made on ultra-thin sili-
con sheets to display even high levels of flexibility, while retaining
their excellent electric characteristics [10,19,22–26]. Further struc-
tural modifications and smart architectures in the thin membranes
can expand their mechanical characteristics to go beyond flexibil-
ity and even reach stretchability. For instance, ultra-thin silicon
sheets can be structured to have a wavy profile, stretchable in na-
ture, when transferred onto a pre-strained polydimethylsiloxane
(PDMS) sheet. This wavy shape in the structure provides end to end
stretchability and offers elastic response when strain is applied to
the structure [10,15,27–30]. A similar strategy is applied by replac-
ing the straight silicon sheets with serpentine traces. In this case
the level of stretchability can be carefully designed and improved,
because higher elongation can be reached by the buckling-induced,
twisting deformation and sequential unfolding of the serpentine
structures [31]. An immediate extension to these strategies consist
in arranging the brittle semiconducting materials, containing the
active electronics, in arrays of rigid islands, which are spatially
distributed over an elastic substrate and electrically joined through
especially designed metallic interconnects [32–37]. The design of
these interconnects is prepared in a way to mitigate the strain
induced during the flexing, stretching, or even twisting. The main
idea behind this arrangement is to minimize the stress localization
at the brittle region of the electronics [13]. Another benefit of this
scheme is that it provides the freedom to separate and reorganize
the different components of the system, such as power manage-
ment, sensing modules, communication, etc.
Unlike the islands, interconnects can be stretched due to their
structure. Designing interconnects into stretchable forms can re-
sult in structures that can withstand large strain deformations. Kim
et al. [38] developed a concept to build a network of islands on
an elastomer and then connecting the islands through buckled-
arch shaped interconnects. Upon the application of applied strain,
interconnects move out of the plane to mitigate the effect of
the applied pressure. In the same work, an alternative structure
was also proposed by replacing the straight-arch-shaped, buckled
interconnects with effectively longer serpentine bridges such that
the effect of external strain is compensated by the change in height
and geometry of non-coplanar serpentines. A powerful alternative
configuration comes from naturally occurring structures known as
fractals, a self-repeating structure that can provide stretchability to
a larger extent. The use of fractal structures, such as Peano, Greek
cross or Vicsek, for stretchable electronics was demonstrated by
Fan et al. [39] in a health monitoring and communication appli-
cation. It also showed that higher order fractal structures demon-
strate better stretchability; for example, third order Peano layout
showed more than 20% stretchability which is even higher than
skin’s elastic limit. Recently, Yan et al. [40] developed a novel
technique to build complex 3D out-of-plane topologies using mul-
tilayer 2D precursors on a pre-strained substrate, studying the use
of a variety of geometries, such as circular cages, blooming flower,
entangled wavy arcs, etc., with the potential for innovative out-of-
plane, stretchable applications, like a demonstrated spiral-based
tunable inductor for wireless communication. Similarly by using
compressive buckling Xu et al. [41] demonstrated to transform
2D structures into 3D. Several 3D geometries were studied that
resulted from their 2D precursors like Helix, toroids and spirals.
The use of spiral structures is of especial interest for us due
to their advantageous mechanical characteristics. For instance,
it has been recently demonstrated by Lv et al. [42] that spiral-
based structures can provide larger stretchability as compared to
45
serpentine-based structures with the same in-plane area (plastic
deformation reached at ∼100% applied strain with serpentine-
based structures, compared to 200% for the spiral). In fact, the use
of spirals as ultra-stretchable interconnects has been already pro-
posed by Huang et al. [22] earlier on, where a topology of silicon-
based circular islands, meant to host electronics, were physically
interconnected through silicon spiral springs in a 2D network. In
this work, a very large area expansion ratio of 51 times the original
size was achieved, which can be extremely advantageous in macro-
electronics applications. Expanding on this, it has been demon-
strated that the stretchability ratio can be even further improved
by increasing the number of the spiral springs in an area-efficient
way. Thus, an all silicon-based network with hexagonal islands was
proposed, where the islands were physically interconnected with
double-arm spiral structures, such as the one shown in Fig. 1(a),
reaching an unprecedented stretch ratio of more than 1000%. Ad-
ditionally, the base of spring arms were modified with serpentine-
like structures to mitigate the effect of high strain at both ends,
thus reducing the localized strain at these points by half and
evenly distributing it throughout the spiral structure [19]. Practical
implementations that use spiral structures to build highly stretch-
able systems for diverse applications have been demonstrated
as well. For instance, Mamidanna et al. [43] demonstrated the
excellent mechanic and electric performance of spiral-shaped, re-
active ink-based interconnects, showing outstanding stretchability
(160%–180%) with only ∼2.5% variation in electrical resistance
after being subjected to 1000 elongation cycles. More recently,
a spiral-inspired stretchable thermoelectric generator (TEG) was
shown to, interestingly, generate higher electric power while being
stretched. This can be easily explained since the temperature gra-
dient increases at stretching, given the adequate conditions [44].
Inspired by these all-silicon, spiral-based structures and by
the concept of fractals, this letter studies, through finite element
analysis (FEA), the effect of replacing the spiral’s arms with ser-
pentine and horseshoe structures for maximum stress and strain
reduction, while maintaining an efficient use of area. This fractal
inspired concept, although not self-repeating, consists of the effec-
tive, combined use of spiral, serpentine and horseshoe structures
(a structure within a structure). The simulation results showed
a considerable reduction in stress and strain, up to 42%, for the
compound serpentine–spiral structure compared with the original
spiral. Moreover, even further reduction was achieved, up to ∼55%
compared with the original spiral, through the optimized com-
pound serpentine–spiral with horseshoe structures at the arms’
start and end.
2. Finite element analysis
In general, serpentine/horseshoe structures contain periodic
cells; one unit cell with equal halves with each unit cell containing
two half circles of radius R, thickness t, arch angle α , width w, S
is the end-to-end distance and length l between the half circles
(reference schematic can be seen at the inset of Fig. 3(a)). The
analytical solution of the in-plane serpentine/horseshoe mechanic
behavior has been studied in detail in previous works [45–47].
The general equation for end-to-end distance, S, in case of
horseshoe serpentine structure, presented in [45], is given as,
( )
l
S = 4 R cos α − sin α . (1)
2
The above equation shows that for higher stretchability, the radius
R of the half-circle plays a vital role and is directly proportional
to the end-to-end displacement, whereas the thickness t of the
structure will have no effect.
Additionally, a useful non-linear theoretical model for fractal-
inspired horseshoe microstructures has been already developed
46 M.U. Rehman, J.P. Rojas / Extreme Mechanics Letters 15 (2017) 44–50
Fig. 1. Spiral Structures with triangular ends. (a) Schematic of a fully stretched
spiral structure with two arms and triangular ends. (b) Stress comparison between
the spiral with and without triangular ends along the arms. (c) Strain distribution
comparison between the spiral with and without triangular ends along the arms.
by Ma et al. [48], which also demonstrated that by increasing the
order of the horseshoe, the stretchability of the system would be
improved. In our case, we are interested in the incorporation of
serpentine structures, with α = l = 0, within the spiral design
in order to have a simpler design with less area usage. Later on,
we also incorporated horseshoe structures to minimize stress and
strain in specific areas only. Although horseshoe structures might
provide better stretchability and less stress localization, we used
them partially in our structure mainly because they take up more
space than a simple serpentine, especially if we consider the use
of several turns around the spiral to maximize the stretch ratio,
without utilizing too much area.
The maximum strain in the case of the spiral structure is given
as [19]:
w
εmax = (2)
2RS − w
where RS is the radius of the inner circle of the spiral (Fig. 1(a)),
and w is the width of the arms. Similarly, the maximum strain in
the case of the serpentine with α = l = 0, can be express as [45]:
6w
εmax = (3)
R−w
where R is the radius of the inner half-circle in the serpentine, and
w is the width of the arm (Fig. 2(b)).
Both the above Eqs. (2) and (3) show that the maximum strain
is directly proportional to the width and inversely proportional to
the radius of the half-circle. Consequently, the design should try
to maximize the radius to width ratio of both structures, bearing
Fig. 2. Spiral structure with serpentine arms. Schematics of (a) serpentine structure
with unequal circular halves, and (b) serpentine structure of equal circular halves.
(c) Stress comparison between two serpentine/spiral structures along the arms. (d)
Strain distribution comparison between two serpentine structures along the arms.
in mind area and fabrication constrains. In the case of the spiral,
we chose a width of 5 µm and the radius of 250 µm, such that the
strain reaches to a maximum of 1%. For the case of the serpentine
the width remains the same (5 µm) and the radius R of each half-
circle was selected to be 14.5 µm, mainly considering an adequate
spacing between the spiral’s inner circle (250 µm) and serpentine’s
half-circle (trough of the serpentine). In addition, the maximum
stretchability achievable using the spiral structure with two arms
is dependent on the number of turns in the spiral. This is shown by
the equation below.
Emax = 2π N (4)
where Emax and N represent the maximum stretchability achiev-
able and number of turns of the arms respectively. Eq. (4) is a
simplified expression, which shows us that the main parameter for
reaching a specific stretchability is simply the number of turns N.
We studied several variants of the serpentine/horseshoe struc-
tures and their mechanical response was analyzed through finite
element simulations. At first, by replacing the spiral’s arms with
serpentines the stress and strain distribution was analyzed to iden-
tify weak areas. Subsequently, the arms’ structure was further opti-
mized, where the main objective was to not only reduce the strain
but also to minimize the stress localization near the critical areas;
the starting and the ending of spiral’s arms. Finally, optimized
serpentine–spiral structures were analyzed and their performance
was compared with the original spiral-based structure. To carry
 M.U. Rehman, J.P. Rojas / Extreme Mechanics Letters 15 (2017) 44–50 47

out the finite element simulations COMSOL Multiphysics was used.

2D geometries, designed in SOLIDWORKS, were imported into
COMSOL Multiphysics using its CAD import tool and then extruded
to 3D at a height of 50 µm (thickness of thin-silicon substrate).
The geometry was partitioned into different domains for better
mesh distribution efficiency. The top surface of the inner circle was
used to create a coarse quad-based mesh, while the arms were
used to create finer triangular-based mesh for highest detail. Using
the sweep function, the top layer meshes were propagated to the
whole geometry. For boundary conditions, one arm was kept fixed
while the other was subjected to a prescribed displacement, as
shown in Fig. 1(a), and the stress and strain values were analyzed
at a maximum displacement of 1.8 mm, reached in gradual steps of
50 µm. We also included the effect of geometric non-linearity due
to the large deformation of the structure. Finally, silicon (single-
crystal isotropic) was used from the material library, although an
important point to clarify is that silicon has an anisotropic nature,
and its electrical and mechanical properties will depend on its crys-
tal orientation. In fact, a variation as big as 45% may be observed
in the elastic modulus of silicon depending upon its orientation.
In our particular case, we chose to work with a standard (100)
Si wafer, in which the X - and Y -axes (⟨110⟩ direction; parallel
and perpendicular to (100) wafer’s flat), will both have an elastic
modulus of 169 GPa (value used in our simulations). If a different
orientation should be used, then it should be considered that the
smallest elastic modulus will be found in the ⟨100⟩ direction (130
GPa), whereas the maximum modulus value will be in the ⟨111⟩
direction (188 GPa) [49].

3. Results and discussion

As mentioned earlier, this research work studies several vari-

ants of serpentine structures and their combination with the spi-
ral structure to demonstrate their effectiveness for stretchable
electronics. The performance of these optimized structures was
compared with the original spiral structure presented in Fig. 1(a).
Therefore, we first simulated the original spiral structure with
two arms and later we added triangular-like end structures at the
extremes of each arm. This was done to minimize and redistribute
the stress localized at those end points and to represent more
accurately the actual case where there should be a smoother area
transition between the islands and the arms of the spirals (inset of
Fig. 1(a)). Additionally, Fig. 1(a) shows the fully extended original
spiral with triangular ends where one arm is fixed and the other
is subjected to the displacement, while Fig. 1(b) and (c) show the
comparison between the stress and strain distribution along the
arms for both structures. The two strains in the graph represent
the compression and elongation in each side of the arm, the upper
and the lower side, while the two halves represent the strain in
each arm, left and right. The points with the maximum stress and
strain, in the case of the spiral structure without triangular ends,
were expectedly at the extreme ends of the spiral’s arms. This
maximum stress and strain were 8698 MPa and 4.23% respectively,
as a result of a prescribed displacement of 1.8 mm (∼250% applied
deformation). By the addition of transitional triangular structures
at both ends of the spiral’s arms, the peak stress and strain values
were reduced to 4284 MPa and 1.49% respectively (these values
will be our reference from now on). Since these end points are to
be connected between islands, it is vital to lower the stress/strain
at these weak localizations. Interestingly, the addition of triangular
ends shifted the maximum stress/strain to the start of the spiral’s
arms, as shown in Fig. 1(b) and (c).
The next step after analyzing the spiral structure and noting
its maximum stress localization points, was to replace the spiral’s
arms with different variants of serpentine structures. As men-
tioned above, the radius of the arch of the serpentine plays a very
Fig. 3. Spiral structure with equal serpentine halves and horseshoes at the
end/beginning of arms. Schematics of (a) serpentine/spiral structure with horseshoe
at the end (Inset shows the main parameters of a horseshoe structure), and (b)
with horseshoe at the start. (c) Stress comparison along the arms, and (d) strain
distribution comparison along the arms.
important role in the performance of the structure. To study the
effect of radius, we compared two versions of serpentine. The
version shown in Fig. 2(a) is a serpentine structure with each
circular half having different radius represented by R1 and R2 ,
with the values of 14.5 µm and 9.5 µm respectively In this case
the trough is bigger (represented by R1 ) in size as compared to
the crest (represented by R2 ). The other version has both circular
halves of the serpentine with equal radius R, where R = R1 , the
longest radius, as shown in Fig. 2(b). The comparison of stress
and strain between the two structures is shown in Fig. 2(c) and
(d) respectively. Simulation results show that the structure with
equal radius halves resulted in lower stress/strain as compared
to the structure with different halves (very similar results were
obtained for the case where the trough was smaller than the crest
as presented in the supplementary material). The maximum stress
in case of unequal halves was found to be at the start of the spiral’s
arm under displacement with a value of 2309 MPa which is 46%
less than the original spiral in Fig. 1(a), while the maximum peak
strain was found to be 0.93% at the start of the triangular base
structure in the arm under displacement, which is 37.6% less than
the original spiral. On the other hand, the structure with equal
radius halves showed a reduced peak stress and strain, at the start
of the spiral’s arm under displacement, of 2265 MPa and 0.87%
respectively, which represents a much higher respective reduction
of 47.12% and 41% less than the original spiral structure.
48 M.U. Rehman, J.P. Rojas / Extreme Mechanics Letters 15 (2017) 44–50

Fig. 4. Structure with equal serpentine halves and horseshoes at the beginning and end of the arms. Schematics of (a) serpentine/spiral structure with two arms and horseshoe
structure, and (b) stretched structure. (c) 3D stress distribution along the arms, and (d) 3D strain distribution along the arms. (e) Stress comparison between original spiral
and compound structure along their arms, and (f) strain distribution comparison between original spiral and compound structure along their arms.

Since it has been observed from the initial simulations that
the maximum points for stress and strain points are either at the
beginning or at the end of the spiral’s structure, therefore we
have focused our further optimization steps on those points, to
reduce and redistribute the stress localization. In order to improve
these weaker regions, we have added horseshoe structures at the
end, shown in Fig. 3(a), and at the beginning of the spiral’s arms,
shown in Fig. 3(b), given that there is more area available at those
regions. Moreover, the starting point of the spiral’s arms was also
optimized to allow the arm to move freely, with higher mobility
as an improved transition point from the rigid circular island to
the serpentine structure (as shown in Fig. 3(b)). Their performance
was compared in order to study the effect of each modification
separately. From Fig. 3(c), for the case of the structure with horse-
shoes at the end of the spiral’s arms, the peak stress was reduced
compared to the previous cases, and the maximum value was
noted to be 2133 MPa, located at the beginning of the fixed arm,
which is 50.2% less than the original spiral in Fig. 1(a). Similarly,
the maximum value of strain was noted to be 0.82%, which is 45%
less than original spiral structure. On the other hand, the structure
with horseshoes at the start of the spiral’s arms showed higher
reduction compared to the one with horseshoes at the end. The
peak stress was noted to be at the end of the fixed serpentine
arm, with values of 1866 MPa, 56.44% less than the original spiral,
while the strain was found to be 0.72%, which is also 51.7% less
than original spiral structure. This demonstrate the importance of
designing a good transition between the rigid and the stretching
structures.
Finally, we have combined both modifications presented in
Fig. 3(a) and (b) into a single, optimized structure and compared its
performance with the original un-optimized spiral, from Fig. 1(a).
The resultant structure has serpentines with equal radius and
horseshoe structures at both start and end of the spiral’s arms, as
shown in Fig. 4(a), and in Fig. 4(b) being fully stretched. Fig. 4(c)
and (d) show the stress and strain distribution along the spiral’s
arms. The simulation results are then compared with the initial
results from the spiral structure with triangular ends shown in
Fig. 1(b) and (c). These results clearly show the outstanding me-
chanical performance improvement of the optimized, compound
serpentine–spiral structure with horseshoe ends. The maximum
values for the stress and strain, due to the incorporated modifi-
cations, were observed to be 1779 MPa and 0.69% along the arms,
which represents 58.47% and 53.7% less than the original spiral re-
spectively, as shown in Fig. 4(e) and (f). Likewise, a much smoother
distribution is also apparent from the same figures. Based on these
simulations it could be inferred that the effective implementation
of compound structures in key locations can greatly help to re-
duce stress and strain and enable a better distribution along the
structure as compared to the original structure by itself. Moreover,
by the addition of more turns, the serpentine–spiral structures
stretchability can be increased to many folds depending on the
number of turns added. Finally, addition of horseshoe structures
greatly improved the structure’s performance but at the price of
higher use of space. In that sense, we can say that there is a compro-
mise between stretchability and area efficiency, and finding their
balance can be crucial for any given application.
 M.U. Rehman, J.P. Rojas / Extreme Mechanics Letters 15 (2017) 44–50
4. Conclusions
In this letter we have presented a very efficient compound
structure (serpentine–spiral–horseshoe) for stretchable electron-
ics. Several variants of serpentine and horseshoe structures were
designed and their mechanical properties were studied using fi-
nite element analysis. Simulation results show that replacing the
spiral’s arms with serpentines increases the mechanical reliability
of the structure by reducing the peak stress and strain. Moreover,
further improvements can be made by adding horseshoe structures
at the arms’ starting and ending points, at the cost of more area.
In summary, smart design of optimized compound structures can
lead to efficient interconnection schemes for stretchable electron-
ics with area efficiency and better mechanical robustness and
reliability.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to acknowledge the support provided by
the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR) at King Fahd University
of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) for funding this work through
project No. JF151001.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary material related to this article can be found
online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eml.2017.05.004.
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