Company Profile

MC10 Inc. is an advanced materials company organized around development of a flexible electronics technology originally conceived by one of the founders whle at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The firm's proprietary technology platform enables high performance silicon devices to become bendable and stretchable, greatly expanding the markets for high performance microelectronics. MC10 aims to deliver the high performance of brittle, rigid semiconductors in a flexible, stretchable material. The technology can be used to embed advanced electronics in products that can conform to moving, multi-dimensional surfaces. For example, this could be useful in putting sensors in wearable health monitors on the skin, or for medical devices such as catheters and stents, all of which need to conform to spaces in or on the human body, Icke says. Another application of interest are curved imaging devices, or “electronic eye cameras,” that mimic the human retina. The product can incorporate a variety of different sensors and actuators and most types of electronics into something that is conformal and three-dimensional. The stretchable silicon material is extremely thin silicon printed onto pre-stretched rubber. Much of MC10’s intellectual property addresses how to design the material so that the stress that occurs when it is bent or stretched is applied to the rubber and electrical interconnects and not the active electronics. The initial product that uses the technology “stretchy sensor tape,” which the firm expects to be broadly applied across industries. MC10 was honored in 2013 to be selected to attend and participate in the famous, highly exclusive Davos World Economi