Flexible integrated photonics is a new technology that started to burgeon during the past few years. It opened applications from flexible optical interconnects to conformal sensors on biological tissues. Material choice is one of the most important factors dictating performance of these flexible devices.

Organic polymers generally are compatible with flexible substrates. However, low refractive indexes of polymers (compared with semiconductors) cannot provide the strong optical confinement necessary for compact photonic integration. Besides polymers, researchers are actively pursing semiconductor nanomembranes—thin slices of single-crystal semiconductors with submicrometer thickness—for photonic device integration on flexible substrates.