Buckling of rigid thin films on elastomer substrates underlies the fabrication foundation of stretchable soft electronics. Here we demonstrate an optical approach to in situ characterize the buckling of silicon microribbon driven by releasing the pre-stretched poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate at a controllable strain rate. The method, based on quantitative differential interference microscopy, directly captures the space–time evolution of the surface topography at a frame rate of 100 fps in a large field of view of 50 × $195\mathrm{\mu }\mathrm{m}$ ${}^2$. The nucleation, propagation and stabilization of the buckled structure during the buckling and unbuckling processes are observed and quantified. Our experiment reveals that a sequence of partially buckled patterns are energetically stable to bridge the unbuckled and fully buckled states. This work opens a new experimental scheme for the research on stretchable soft electronics and provides new evidence for the theoretical study of the buckling dynamics.

弹性体基板上刚性薄膜的屈曲是可拉伸软电子产品的制造基础。在这里，我们展示了一种光学方法来原位表征通过以可控应变速率释放预拉伸的聚二甲基硅氧烷 (PDMS) 基板驱动的硅微带屈曲。该方法基于定量微分干涉显微镜，在 50 × 的大视场内以 100 fps 的帧率直接捕捉表面形貌的时空演化。 $195\mathrm{\mu }\mathrm{米}$ ${}^2$. 观察和量化在屈曲和解屈过程中屈曲结构的成核、传播和稳定。我们的实验表明，一系列部分弯曲的图案在能量上是稳定的，可以桥接未弯曲和完全弯曲的状态。这项工作为可伸缩软电子学的研究开辟了新的实验方案，并为屈曲动力学的理论研究提供了新的证据。