https://en.people.cn/n3/2026/0123/c90000-20417758.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09974-0

A team at Fudan University has created a flexible, thread-like “fiber chip” that can be woven into fabric, opening the door to garments that function as interactive screens, advanced brain implants capable of processing signals internally and hyperrealistic virtual reality touch.

The researchers integrated a functioning integrated circuit — combining processing, memory and signal capabilities — directly into a single, elastic polymer fiber thinner than a human hair.

The central challenge was constructing complex, stable micro-electronics on a soft, curved material that can stretch and twist, and circumvented the limitations of fiber’s tiny surface area by drawing inspiration from “rolling sushi.” They created an ultra-smooth, nanometer-flat surface on a stretchable elastomer, turning a “rugged mountain range” into a “glass-smooth plain.” Then, they fabricated high-precision circuits on this sheet using standard lithography manufacturing processes, and protected them with a dense coating to resist chemical solvents. Finally, they rolled this film into a tight, multi-layered spiral within the fiber itself.

This architecture allows for a remarkable integration of transistors, resistors and capacitors, lab tests have shown that the resulting fiber circuit could withstand repeated bending and abrasion for 10,000 cycles, and even being crushed by a 15.6-tonne truck. Crucially, it packs 100,000 transistors into every centimeter, so a single one-meter fiber hosts as many transistors as a classic computer’s CPU.

In a demonstration, the fiber chips were shown to be capable of processing digital and analogue signals and performing neural computing tasks for image recognition with high accuracy. The fabrication is seid to be fully compatible with today’s lithography lines, so it can plug straight into high-volume manufacturing.