Flexible oxide epitaxial thin films for wearable electronics: Fabrication, physical properties, and applications

Recently, flexible oxide epitaxial thin films are of increasing interests owing to their excellent physical properties and wide applications. The oxide epitaxial thin films with flexible, lightweight and wearable are promising for the applications in flexible and wearable devices, such as flexible sensors, flexible detectors, flexible oscillators, flexible spintronics, wearable displays and electronic skin, etc. This review aims to summarize the fabrication, physical properties and applications of the flexible oxide epitaxial thin films for wearable electronics in most recent few years. The fabrication of flexible oxide epitaxial thin films reviewed here mainly includes the deposition on flexible substrates at high temperature and epitaxial lift-off (ELO) from rigid substrates. The physical properties and applications of flexible oxide epitaxial thin films reviewed here chiefly focus on the area of electricity and magnetism, including stable and tunable physical properties in the flexible oxide epitaxial thin films. In final, the perspectives and challenges of flexible oxide thin films for wearable electronics have been also addressed.