Power supply in any electronic system is a crucial necessity. Especially so in fully compliant personalized advanced healthcare electronic self-powered systems where we envision seamless integration of sensors and actuators with data management components in a single freeform platform to augment the quality of our healthcare, smart living and sustainable future. However, the status-quo energy storage (battery) options require packaging to protect the indwelling toxic materials against harsh physiological environment and vice versa, compromising its mechanical flexibility, conformability and wearability at the highest electrochemical performance. Therefore, clean and safe energy storage solutions for wearable and implantable electronics are needed to replace the commercially used unsafe lithium-ion batteries. This dissertation discusses a highly manufacturable integration strategy for a free-form lithium-ion battery towards a genuine mechanically compliant wearable system. We sequentially start with the optimization process for the preparation of all solid-state material comprising a ‘’Lithium-free’’ lithium-ion microbattery with a focus on thin film texture optimization of the cathode material. State of the art complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology was used for the thin film based battery. Additionally, this thesis reports successful development of a transfer-less scheme for a flexible battery with small footprint and free form factor in a high yield production process. The reliable process for the flexible lithium-ion battery achieves an enhanced energy density by three orders of magnitude compared to the available rigid ones. Interconnection and bonding procedures of the developed batteries are discussed for a reliable back end of line process flexible, stretchable and stackable modules. Special attention is paid to the advanced bonding, handling and packaging strategies of flexible batteries towards system-level applications. Finally, this work shows seamless integration of the developed battery module in an effective strategy to incorporate them into a complex architecture such as orthodontic domain in the human body. The developed optoelectronic system embedded in a 3D printed smart dental braces for enhanced enamel healthcare protection and overall healthcare cost reduction. These findings complement and provide power solution options in which flexibility of electronics is an added beneficial dimensionality to wearable biomedical and implantable devices.

In this research, some fundamental aspects of surface growth processes are investigated through in-situ synchrotron based x-ray techniques, including a new coherent x-ray technique developed as part of this work, as well as ex-situ Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and simulation. The first part of this dissertation focuses on careful examination of early-time kinetics of indium (In) island growth via real-time Grazing Incidence Small Angle X-ray Scattering (GISAXS) since it is a good example of simple growth systems allowing the results to be directly compared to surface growth theories and also because of its technical relevance for III–V semiconductor deposition. The results are compared with Family-Meakin (FM) droplet growth and coalescence theory through Monte Carlo simulations. In addition, room temperature deposition of amorphous silicon (a-Si) through DC magnetron sputtering onto a silicon (Si) substrate has been investigated via real-time GISAXS. The deposition conditions are optimized to create an idealized growth environment so that the results can be directly compared to surface growth models. Performing the deposition at room temperature results in adatoms having limited surface mobility, which causes formation of correlated mound-like structures on the surface at the early stages of the growth. The correlation distance between the mount-like structures is found to grow linearly with time. The results are compared to a ballistic deposition model including self-shadowing and desorption effects. The second half of this study focuses on investigation of the kinetic roughening dynamics of thin film growth, where the local dynamics are measured after the overall kinetic evolution of the surface roughness reach a steady-state saturation. Coherent X-ray GISAXS (Co-GISAXS) has been developed as a new approach to investigate surface dynamics during thin film deposition. Room temperature deposition of a-Si and amorphous tungsten disilicide (a-WSi2) through DC magnetron sputtering onto respectively Si and SiO2 substrates has been examined. The overall dynamics are complex, but power law behavior is observed for the structure factor and correlation times at the most surface sensitive section of the data. This research demonstrated that Co-GISAXS is a powerful new approach to investigate the correlated dynamics between surface and sub-surface structures. / 2016-10-27T00:00:00Z

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