Flexible fibre chips as thin as a human hair,

• Category: Tools and Equipment
• Date 29-12-2025

Scientists say they've developed transistor-dense, flexible fibre chips as thin as a human hair, which can survive 'crushing by a container truck weighing 15.6 tons'

A team of scientists say they've developed a new type of fibre integrated circuit technology, or FIC, with a potential integration density of up to 100,000 transistors per centimetre. The chip-integrated fibres are said to be as thin as a human hair, and can withstand repeated bending and abrasion, stretching, twisting, and even "crushing by a container truck weighing 15.6 tons".

Their results have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, and the potential uses for such a thin, bendable, and resilient tech are legion (via SCMP). Beyond the possibility of creating fabrics where every fibre is its own miniature system, the scientists say that the tech could also be leveraged into brain-computer interfaces.

The study into the fabric-like tech was led by Professor Huisheng Peng at Fudan University. The researchers built circuits onto an elastic substrate, before rolling it into a thin, resilient fibre which can function as a complete microcomputer system.