• A Digital Camera With a Design Inspired by the Insect Eye
  In arthropods, evolution has created a remarkably sophisticated class of imaging system, with wide angle field of view, low aberrations, high acuity to motion and infinite depth of field. We demonstrated materials and fabrication schemes for arthropod-inspired cameras with numbers of imaging elements comparable to those found in the eyes fire ants and bark beetles The devices combine elastomeric compound optics with deformable arrays of thin silicon photodetectors, in co-integrated sheets that can be blown up like a balloon.
• A Physically Transient Form of Electronics
  Silk, magnesium, magnesium oxide, silicon dioxide and silicon nanomembranes provide a collection of materials for high performance integrated circuits, actuators, sensors and power supply systems that dissolve, completely and with controlled rates, in water or biofluids. Potential applications of this transient electronics technology range from resorbable medical implants, to degradable environmental monitors, to compostable consumer devices. The image illustrates a transient electronic circuit in a state of partial dissolution in a puddle of water
• Stretchable Lithium Ion Battery
  Thin, elastomeric substrates, distributed arrays of active materials, and 'spring-within-a-spring' interconnect structures yield a kind of rechargeable lithium ion battery that has the mechanics of a rubber band. Such devices could be useful for powering electronic circuits that laminate onto the skin or other surfaces of the human body.
• Spatio-temporal mapping of brain activity during epileptic seizures
  Flexible, bio-integrated sheets of sensors and electronics provide new tools for mapping electrical activity in the brain, with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. The resulting technology is providing new insights into the neuroscience of epilepsy, in a form that also has clinical relevance for surgical procedures used to treat the most acute cases of epilepsy. The image shown here is a color representation of electrical potential measured across the surface of the brain of a feline animal model, recorded during an induced seizure.
• A Cellular-Scale, Injectable Optoelectronics Technology
  In neuroscience, an ability to insert light sources, detectors, sensors and other components into precise locations of the deep brain could yield versatile and important capabilities. We recently reported an ultrathin, 'injectable' class of cellular-scale optoelectronics that offers such features, with examples of completely wireless and programmed complex behavioral control over freely moving animals. The ability of these ultrathin, mechanically compliant, biocompatible devices also can be used in other organ systems. The image shows a representative device, threaded through the eye of a needle.
• Large Area Negative Index Metamaterials
  High resolution printing techniques enable the formation of large-area sheets of materials that display negative index of refraction, for advanced imaging devices, photonic components and sensors.
• Epidermal Electronics
  Specially designed materials, geometrical forms and integration layouts enable electronic systems with physical properties matched to the epidermis, suitable as a new class of skin-integrated device for applications in physiological status monitoring, wound measurement/treatment, human/machine interfaces, covert communications and others.
• Stretchable Silicon Integrated Circuit
  These devices use silicon nanomaterials in ultrathin layouts that place the active materials in the neutral mechanical plane, i.e. the plane where bending induced strains are zero. Bonding this type of circuit to a prestretched rubber substrate leads to 'wavy' shapes that behave mechanically much like an accordion bellows when stretched or compressed. The result is a stretchable, high performance circuit technology.
• Electronic eyeball camera
  This advanced camera uses a hemispherically curved array of photodetectors, in a design inspired by the human retina. This layout enables wide angle fields of view, with uniform illumination and very low aberrations, even when very simple imaging optics are used.
• Bio-integrated electronics for cardiac therapy
  This flexible, waterproof circuit can wrap the surface of the heart, to produce high resolution 'maps' of electrical behavior of the cardiac muscle, during beating. The data can help surgeons locate aberrant tissues that are responsible for certain types of arrhythmias.
• Flexible Silicon Microcell Photovoltaics
  This unusual PV device consists of an interconnected collection of microbars of silicon, created by controlled etching and release from a silicon wafer followed by transfer printing onto a thin sheet of plastic. The device offers the performance of conventional, rigid silicon modules, but with the lightweight, mechanically flexible construction found in organic photovoltaics.
• Electronics on Balloons: Instrumented Surgical Catheters
  This advanced cardiac surgical and diagnostic device involves high performance semiconductur components (e.g. microscale LEDs), RF ablation electrodes and multi-modal sensors, all integrated into the inflatable surface of an otherwise convetnional balloon catheter. Advanced materials, device designs and concepts in mechanics enable these systems to function at levels of inflation that corresponds of strains of nearly 200%. The device delivers high resolution EP mapping, sensing and ablation functionality to the endocardial surface, in a minimally invasive mode for treating arrythmias.

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Rogers Research Group

We seek to understand and exploit interesting characteristics of 'soft' materials, such as polymers, liquid crystals, and biological tissues as well as hybrid combinations of them with unusual classes of micro/nanomaterials, in the form of ribbons, wires, membranes, tubes or related. Our aim is to control and induce novel electronic and photonic responses in these materials; we also develop new 'soft lithographic' and biomimetic approaches for patterning them and guiding their growth. This work combines fundamental studies with forward-looking engineering efforts in a way that promotes positive feedback between the two. Our current research focuses on soft materials for conformal electronics, nanophotonic structures, microfluidic devices, and microelectromechanical systems, all lately with an emphasis on bio-inspired and bio-integrated technologies. These efforts are highly multidisciplinary, and combine expertise from nearly every traditional field of technical study.

Professor John A. Rogers

Professor John A. Rogers obtained BA and BS degrees in chemistry and in physics from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1989.  From MIT, he received SM degrees in physics and in chemistry in 1992 and the PhD degree in physical chemistry in 1995.  From 1995 to 1997, Rogers was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard University Society of Fellows.  During this time he also served as a founder and Director of Active Impulse Systems, a company that commercialized technologies developed during his PhD work.  He joined Bell Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff in the Condensed Matter Physics Research Department in 1997, and served as Director of this department from the end of 2000 to 2002.  He currently holds the Swanlund Chair, the highest chaired position at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. He has a primary appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, with joint appointments in the Departments of Chemistry, Bioengineering, Mechanical Science and Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering.  He served as the Director of a Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center on nanomanufacturing, funded by the National Science Foundation, from 2009-2012. He is currently Director of the Seitz Materials Research Laboratory.

Rogers’ research includes fundamental and applied aspects of nano and molecular scale fabrication as well as materials and patterning techniques for unusual electronic and photonic devices, with an emphasis on bio-integrated and bio-inspired systems.  He has published more than 350 papers, and is an inventor on over 80 patents and patent applications, more than 50 of which are licensed or in active use by large companies and startups that he has co-founded.  His research has been recognized with many awards including, most recently, the Mid-Career Researcher Award from the Materials Research Society (2013), the Lemelson-MIT Prize (2011), a MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (2009), the George Smith Award from the IEEE (2009), the National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship from the Department of Defense (2008), the Daniel Drucker Eminent Faculty Award from the University of Illinois (2007) and the Leo Hendrick Baekeland Award from the American Chemical Society (2007).  Rogers is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE; 2011) and a Fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE; 2009), the American Physical Society (APS; 2006), the Materials Research Society (MRS; 2007) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS; 2008).

Rogers has also been named to many distinguished lectureships, including:

Xingda Lectureship at Peking University, 2013.

Adams Lectureship at Purdue University, 2013.

Presidents Distinguished Lectureship at KAUST, 2013.

Bircher Lectureship at Vanderbilt University, 2013.

Deans Distinguished Lectureship at Northwestern University, 2013.

ET Distinguished Speaker at Applied Materials, 2012.

Wulff Lectureship at M.I.T., 2012.

DB Robinson Distinguished Speaker at University of Alberta, 2012.

GT-COPE Lectureship at Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012.

Nyquist Lectureship at Yale University, 2011.

Judd Distinguished Lecturer at University of Utah, 2011.

ASU Distinguished Scholar and Lecturer at Arizona State University, 2011.

Rosenhow Lectureship at M.I.T., 2011.

Eastman Lectureship in Polymer Science, University of Akron, 2011.

Deans Distinguished Lectureship at Columbia University, 2010.

Nakamura Lectureship at University of California at Santa Barbara, 2010.

Chapman Lectureship (inaugural) at Rice University, 2009.

Zhongguancun Forum Lectureship, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2007.

Dorn Lectureship at Northwestern University, 2007.

Xerox Distinguished Lectureship at Xerox Corporation, 2006.

Robert B. Woodward Scholar and Lectureship at Harvard University, 2001.

Highlights from 2011/2012 include the first:

• flexible electronics for high resolution mapping of brain function
• 3D cavity-coupled plasmonic crystals
• electronically 'instrumented' sutures and surgical gloves
• wireless, implantable LEDs and sensors
• stretchable photovoltaics

Highlights from 2010/2011 include the first:

• 'epidermal' electronics
• electronic 'eyeball' cameras with continuously adjustable zoom magnification
• microcell luminescent concentrator photovoltaics
• 'cloak-scale' negative index metamaterials
• multi-functional electronic balloon catheters for interventional cardiology

Highlights from 2009/2010 include the first:

• multilayer, releasable epitaxy for photovoltaics, RF electronics and imaging
• first principles theory for aligned growth of carbon nanotube arrays
• bio-integrated electronics for high resolution cardiac EP mapping
• bio-resorbable devices for neural electrocorticography
• geometrically controlled adhesion in elastomers and use in deterministic assembly

Highlights from 2008/2009 include the first:

• printed microLED lighting systems and displays
• silicon-on-silk electronics for bioresorbable implants
• curvilinear electronics and paraboloid eye cameras
• high resolution, jet printed patterns of charge
• rubber-like silicon CMOS

Highlights from 2007/2008 include the first:

• electronic eye cameras
• stretchable silicon CMOS integrated circuits
• flexible, semi-transparent solar modules based on monocrystalline silicon
• flexible digital logic circuits based on SWNT thin films
• chemically synthesized, 2D carbon nanomaterials

Highlights from 2006/2007 include the first:

• observation and analysis of buckling mechanics in SWNTs
• quasi-3D plasmonics crystals for biosensing and imaging
• SWNT-based RF analog electronics, including the first all-nanotube transistor radios
• methods for electrohydrodynamic jet printing with sub-micron resolution
• routes to multilayer superstructures of aligned SWNTs

Highlights from 2005/2006 include the first:

• strechable form of single crystal silicon
• GHz flexible transistors on plastic substrates
• single-step two photon 3D nanofabrication technique
• lithographic method with molecular scale (~1 nm) resolution
• printing approach for 3D, heterogeneous integration
• method for growing high density, horizontally aligned SWNTs