Scientists develop hair-thin, transistor-dense fibre chips that survive 15.6-ton truck crush

A team of scientists say they've developed a new type of fibre integrated circuit technology (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'.

The results have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature. The researchers highlight possible uses such as fabrics where every fibre is its own miniature system, and they also suggest the technology could be leveraged into brain-computer interfaces.

Study co-author Peining Chen told the South China Morning Post that 'nanometre-scale photolithography in the future would further increase integration density', and that future iterations could begin 'approaching the integration scale of classical computer central processing units'.

PC Gamer's write-up notes that this does not mean a near-term path to putting a gaming CPU in a blanket, saying the prospect of consumer-level integration of that scale remains 'a long way off'.

What happens next is uncertain: the team points to photolithography advances as a route to higher integration density, but timelines and practical consumer applications are not specified in the paper.

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