The Physics of Nanonet Fabrics and Its Applications in Electronic, Opto-electronic, Biosensing, Energy Storage, and MEMS Devices and Systems

Flexible electronics provides new opportunities to broaden the range of application of electronic component in addressing the grand challenges of energy, health care, sensing and display technologies. While there have been considerable progress in this area based on advances of conducting polymers, newer approaches based on nanonet fabrics, transfer-printed thin films, and flexible interconnects offers higher performance and more reliable alternatives. In this article, we discuss the electrical, optical, biosensing, and energy storage potential of nanonet fabrics. Our analysis show that an entirely new conceptual framework that combines classical techniques along with nonlinear percolation model, fractal geometry of surfaces, and stochastic transport models are necessary to design and optimize the highest performance components and systems based on such nanonet technology. The key ideas turn out to elegantly simple intuitive generalization of stand textbook approaches. And once these techniques are understood and mastered, the design of nanonet components appears to be no more difficult than those based on classical bulk devices.