Hair-thin fiber chips could bring computing directly into clothing

Chinese researchers at Fudan University, led by Peng Huisheng, have developed fully flexible fiber chips that embed complete electronic circuits within strands as thin as human hair. Unlike traditional rigid microchips, these fiber integrated circuits (FICs) use elastic substrates rolled into thread-like fibers, achieving a transistor density of 100,000 per centimeter—comparable to conventional processors. A 1-millimeter fiber can host tens of thousands of transistors, enabling computing capacity similar to medical implant chips, while longer fibers could reach millions of transistors, approaching classical CPU scales. These fibers support both digital and analog processing, including neural-style computing for image recognition. Designed for durability in real-world conditions, the fiber chips withstand over 10,000 bending and abrasion cycles, stretch up to 30%, twist sharply, endure over 100 wash cycles, tolerate temperatures up to 100°C, and survive heavy compression. This robustness allows integration of power supply, sensing, computing, and display functions into a