Chinese scientists have developed fully flexible fiber chips that embed complete electronic circuits inside strands as thin as human hair.
The advance brings electronic textiles closer to functioning like computers and displays, while remaining soft, stretchable, and machine washable.
The breakthrough, reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP), comes from a research team at Fudan University in Shanghai.
Led by Peng Huisheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the group has spent more than a decade rethinking how electronic circuits could exist beyond rigid silicon wafers.
Instead of attaching flat chips to fabric, the researchers built computing systems that become the fabric itself.
Traditional microchips rely on rigid, planar substrates. The Fudan team replaced that approach with elastic substrates capable of hosting complete electronic circuits.
Researchers then rolled these substrates into thread-like fibers, forming what they call fiber integrated circuits, or FICs.
Each fiber measures roughly the thickness of a human hair. Despite its size, the fiber reaches a transistor density of 100,000 per centimetre.
That level matches the industry standard for very large-scale integration used in conventional processors.
At current laboratory photolithography limits, the fibers already support meaningful computing tasks. A 1 millimetre fiber chip can integrate tens of thousands of transistors, giving it information-processing capacity comparable to certain medical implant chips.
Extending the fiber length significantly increases computing power. A one-metre fiber could integrate millions of transistors, approaching the scale of classical computer central processing units.
Future advances in nanometre-scale photolithography could further boost integration density.
Unlike earlier fiber electronics that focused mainly on power delivery or sensing, the new fiber function as complete microcomputer systems.
Each strand integrates resistors, capacitors, diodes, and transistors with high-precision interconnections.
The system processes both digital and analogue signals. It also supports neural-style computing for image recognition tasks, matching the performance of modern in-memory image processors.
Built for real-world wear
The researchers designed the fibers to withstand conditions that rigid chips struggle to survive. In testing, the FICs endured more than 10,000 cycles of bending and abrasion.
They stretched up to 30 percent and twisted at 180 degrees per centimetre.
The fibers also remained functional after more than 100 wash cycles.
They tolerated temperatures up to 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) and survived compression beneath a 15.6-tonne container truck.
These results allowed the team to integrate power supply, sensing, computing, and display functions into a single independent fiber. That removes the need for bulky external chips or wiring in smart clothing.
Toward integrated systems
Over the past decade, the team has developed more than 30 types of functional fiber devices. These include fiber for energy storage, power generation, light emission, display, and biosensing.
The researchers have now demonstrated early scalable manufacturing of fiber chips in the laboratory. That suggests existing infrastructure could support future mass production.
“This fully flexible fiber system paves the way for the interactive patterns desired in cutting-edge applications such as brain-computer interfaces, smart textiles and virtual-reality wearables,” the team wrote.
Source: Interesting Engineering
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