The world of semiconductors is having a bend it like Beckham moment. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have figured out how to make stiff silicon photonic chips flexible and transparent and produce them at scale. The breakthrough makes possible applications like discreet health monitors that conform to the body or lightweight, transparent augmented reality displays that fit the inside curve of a pilot’s helmet.

Silicon photonics uses light instead of electricity to transmit and process data on semiconductor chips. These micron-thick chips have evolved to be part of advanced compact systems but they are typically rigid and opaque. Transparent silicon photonic chips that could bend were limited to small batches.

MIT researchers, in collaboration with engineers at NY Creates at the Albany Nano Tech Complex, have now created a fabrication process that uses standard 300-millimeter foundry fabrication tools to produce flexible and transparent silicon-photonics chips on large-scale wafers. Stress was managed by keeping temperatures at 500 degrees Celsius or below and careful attention to the etching process used in producing the ultrathin wafer layers.

“We’ve now developed a wafer-scale process that produces wafers that are mechanically flexible and optically transparent, enabling novel applications that weren’t previously possible with silicon photonics,” explained Jelena Notaros, an MIT engineering professor and senior author of a paper detailing the fabrication platform. Notaros expects the new fabrication process to be open to the silicon photonics field as a whole even as the MIT team makes further, subtle refinements.

The new flexible silicon photonic chips actually bend better than David Beckham’s famous kick of a soccer ball. MIT researchers tested flexibility by bending a chip thousands of times around cylinders with different diameters. These experiments showed no degradation in performance even when it was bent around a cylinder about the size of a small screw. Degradation didn’t set in until it was bent around a toothpick several times.

Tests using a bionic eye found only minimal hazing for viewers and no image distortion.