Fibre integrated circuits by a multilayered spiral architecture

Article Date: 21 January 2026

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

Summary

This Nature paper presents ‘fibre integrated circuits’ (FICs) made by tightly rolling multilayer functional films into a spiral, yielding high volumetric integration inside millimetre- to sub-millimetre-scale fibres. The authors develop a compact-rolling fabrication method with controlled layer thickness and a semi-cured PDMS interface plus local PDMS thickening to prevent wrinkles and delamination, enabling more than a 50x increase in integration density without increasing fibre radius (typical diameter ~500 µm, layer thickness ~5 µm).

The FICs combine many device types in a single fibre: organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs), OLED pixels and driving circuits, sensors (chemical, electrophysiological, glucose), energy modules (microbatteries, thermoelectric harvesters), resistors/capacitors and conductive tracks. The team demonstrate uniform transistor performance across many devices, neural-computing capability using OECT arrays (simulated inference on face images), and closed-loop fibre systems where sensing, processing, energy and display are integrated.

Extensive mechanical and reliability tests show resistance and transistor stability under bending, twisting, pressing, stretching, abrasion, 1,000–10,000 mechanical cycles and 50 washing cycles. The fabrication apparatus supports metre-scale production control of fibre diameter. Data are available on Figshare; work supported by NSFC and MOST and carried out primarily at Fudan University with many collaborators.

Key Points

Multilayered spiral (compact rolling) architecture packs many circuit layers into a single fibre, boosting integration density by >50× without enlarging fibre radius.
Mechanical design: semi-cured PDMS interlayer adhesion and local PDMS thickening prevent wrinkles, delamination and stress concentration during rolling.
Precise control of fibre diameter is achieved by adjusting layer thickness and length; a custom apparatus enables stable rolling at metre-scale lengths.
FICs integrate diverse functional modules: OECTs, OLED pixels and drivers, sensors (chemical, electrophysiological), microbatteries and thermoelectric harvesters — enabling closed-loop fibre systems.
OECT arrays show neural-computing capability; simulated single-layer networks performed pattern recognition (Olivetti face dataset) using in-fibre devices.
Device uniformity is high: statistical tests on 100 OECTs show minor variations in threshold, mobility, on/off ratio and other metrics.
Durability validated: stable electrical behaviour after bending, twisting, stretching, 1,000–10,000 cycles and 50 standard wash cycles; conductive tracks withstand mechanical stress and abrasion.
Extended-data figures document fabrication parameters, finite-element strain analysis, device stability, and performance of OLEDs, batteries and sensors in practical settings.
All source data are provided with the paper and a supporting figshare repository is cited for datasets.

Author style

Punchy: this is a major materials-and-systems advance — not just a neat lab demo. The team shows real engineering solutions (adhesion layers, thickened PDMS, controllable rolling) that make highly integrated, multifunctional fibres mechanically robust and manufacturable. Read the methods and extended data if you care about scaling or embedding electronics into textiles.

Why should I read this?

Want genuinely smart textiles and wearable electronics that aren’t fragile or clunky? This paper basically explains how to roll full circuits into a single fibre so they survive bending, washing and real use. If you’re into wearable sensors, textile displays or distributed in-fabric computing, this saves you time — they’ve tackled the tricky bits (wrinkles, delamination, strain) and show practical device performance.

Context and relevance

FICs sit at the intersection of materials science, flexible electronics and wearable systems. They advance ongoing trends toward embedding computation and sensing directly into fibres and fabrics (see related work on fibre batteries, diode fibres, in-textile photolithography and single-fibre computing). The multilayer rolling approach addresses key manufacturing and reliability hurdles, making the concept of fully functional smart textiles more realistic for real-world applications such as health monitoring, human–machine interfaces and distributed sensing networks.

Source

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

Article metadata

Authors: Zhen Wang, Ke Chen, Xiang Shi et al. (Fudan University and collaborators)

Funding: National Natural Science Foundation of China (multiple grants) and Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).

Data availability: Supporting data on Figshare: https://figshare.com/s/49d5ed422b56a22dda21