Route to flexible electronics made from exotic materials: Cost-effective method produces semiconducting films from materials that outperform silicon

Engineers have developed a technique to fabricate ultrathin semiconducting films made from a host of exotic materials other than silicon. To demonstrate their technique, the researchers fabricated flexible films made from gallium arsenide, gallium nitride, and lithium fluoride -- materials that exhibit better performance than silicon but until now have been prohibitively expensive to produce in functional devices.