Tufts engineers are building a new class of wearable electronics designed to disappear into everyday life. Instead of rigid, planar chips, they use thread-based integrated circuits that can bend, coil, stretch, and conform to the body’s contours. The result is a free-form electronics platform that can be sewn into clothing or wrapped around moving, curved surfaces—engineered to move with you rather than against you.
The vision is wearable sensing that is thin, soft, and unobtrusive, enabling continuous monitoring of biomarkers and environmental signals. With AI-driven interpretation, these data streams could support smarter fitness feedback, more responsive healthcare, and improved recovery tracking after injury or illness. Beyond consumer wearables, the same approach could extend to clinical and biomedical contexts.
A key advance is how the circuit components are made. The team, led by Tufts professor Sameer Sonkusale with collaborators including Matt Panzer, created transistors, sensors, and other elements directly in thread form. This allows an entire circuit to be assembled as a flexible “fiber-like” system rather than a fixed electronic patch.
Central to the technology is an organic eutectogel. The eutectogel forms a controllable gap—sub-millimeter in scale—between parts of the thread where electron flow is gated. Unlike hydrogel-based connections that can dry out, this eutectogel is designed to be stable, soft, and compatible with contact on or within the body.
The transistors operate through an on/off mechanism controlled by a secondary current acting as a gate, functioning like a valve for electrons along the thread. Because the eutectogel can be repaired, the electrical function can be restored after mechanical disruption: when the gel is separated, rejoining the pieces and applying gentle heat can bring back performance.
The researchers also highlight fabrication simplicity. Their approach avoids photolithography and high-temperature clean-room processing, making it more compatible with flexible polymers and textile-like materials. That shift could reduce manufacturing barriers for large-area, low-cost, soft electronics.
As a proof of concept, they demonstrated circuits that amplify signals from sensitive sensors. They further showed wearable-style prototypes: one placed on the temple to detect blinking, and another positioned near the diaphragm to track breathing pattern changes and rates. These demonstrations suggest a path toward soft monitoring for health, stress, and related conditions.
The work is still early, but the team expects improvements in fabrication speed, precision, and the ability of thread circuits to execute more complex functions. Ultimately, the platform could enable electronics that behave less like hardware and more like an adaptive biological interface.
Subject of Research: Experimental study
Article Title: Free-Form Three-Dimensional Integrated Circuits on a Thread Using Organic Eutectogel-Gated Electrochemical Transistors
News Publication Date: 19-May-2026
Web References: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsami.5c25103
References: 10.1021/acsami.5c25103
Image Credits: Wenxin Zeng
Keywords: Wearable devices; Integrated circuits; Electronic devices
