The central problem the team set out to solve is one that has dogged electronic textiles for years: how to embed genuine circuit-level functionality into fibres without wasting the fibre itself or creating fragile connections. Previous strategies often attached discrete components onto the surface of a fibre or built devices that used only a small fraction of the fibre volume. Interconnects between components tend to be unstable under the repeated bending, stretching and abrasion that clothing endures. Poor fibre utilization means much of the material contributes nothing to the electronics, while unstable interconnects mean the circuits fail exactly when a garment is treated like a garment.

The Donghua group’s answer is to make the fibre itself the circuit. Their microfluidic spinning process flows different functional materials through the channels of a spinning device, combining conductive layers with layers that perform specific functions. By switching the flow rates of the incoming streams during spinning, the researchers can arrange distinct functional modules along the fibre axis in a programmable sequence, rather like writing code that the spinning apparatus executes in material form. The team supported this design step with fluid-encoding simulations, drawing on established understanding of how flow velocity governs behaviour in microfluidic channels, to control where each module forms within the continuously drawn fibre.

Crucially, the researchers designed their modules around four fundamental types of signal conversion. Electroluminescent modules handle electron-to-photon conversion, turning electrical drive signals into emitted light. Resistor and capacitor modules perform electron-to-electron conversion, providing the passive components needed for analogue signal processing such as filtering. Organic electrochemical transistor modules carry out electron-to-ion conversion, translating electronic currents into ionic motion within a semiconductor polymer and thereby enabling digital logic operations. Finally, electro-quasistatic modules provide electro-quasistatic modulation, which the team exploited for touchless sensing and control. Because all four module families can be produced and integrated within the same spinning process, a single fibre can combine them into a working circuit tailored to a specific task.

The demonstrations span an impressive functional range. Electroluminescent IC fibres emit light, and a single fibre can encode a variety of luminescent colours along its length, suggesting displays or lighting elements woven directly into fabric. Resistor-capacitor IC fibres perform analogue signal processing, implementing functions such as tuneable filtering. Fibres built around organic electrochemical transistors execute digital logic, including inverter circuits, bringing Boolean operations into the thread itself. The electro-quasistatic IC fibres are perhaps the most striking: they sense the approach of a body or hand without contact, exploiting the quasistatic electric field coupling between the fibre and nearby conductors, and can translate that sensing into control signals.

To show that this touchless capability is more than a laboratory curiosity, the researchers connected their electro-quasistatic fibres to real machines. In supplementary demonstrations, the fibres controlled a virtual drone, a physical drone and a robotic arm, and a robotic arm equipped with the fibres automatically tracked a target object. The team even calibrated the relationship between applied voltage and sensing distance using a simple cardboard sheet wrapped in aluminium foil, and tested how nearby conductors interfere with the fibres’ operation, work that speaks to the practical engineering needed before such sensors can live inside clothing in the messy electromagnetic environment of daily life.

Durability, the historic weak point of e-textiles, receives serious attention. The IC fibres can be woven, sewn and arranged into textiles and, according to the researchers, withstand repeated deformation and washing. This mechanical resilience builds on the group’s earlier work on stretchable conductive fibres, in which a worm-shaped graphene microlayer enabled ultrahigh tensile strain and stable conductance, and on their broader research into soft fibre electronics based on semiconducting polymers. By embedding the functional layers within the fibre structure rather than coating them on top, the spinning process protects the electronics from the mechanical abuse that destroys surface-mounted devices.

The study situates itself within a rapidly maturing field. Recent years have seen large-area display textiles, fabric-based optical communication using diode fibres, digital electronics in fibres enabling fabric-based machine-learning inference, a single-fibre computer capable of textile networks and distributed inference, and a chipless textile electronics platform based on body-coupled fibres. Related work has produced fibre-integrated circuits through multilayered spiral architectures and axially encoded metafibers created by sequence spinning. What distinguishes the new approach is the programmability of the spinning process itself: rather than assembling pre-made components, the researchers encode circuit topology into the fluid flows that form the fibre, so the circuit design and the fibre manufacturing become a single continuous operation.

The implications reach toward what the authors frame through the lens of embodied intelligence, the idea that sensing, processing and feedback should be integrated into a physical platform rather than separated across devices. A textile based on IC fibres could, in principle, sense its environment, process the signals locally and respond with light, logic or actuation, all within the fabric. The researchers also point to applications in robotics, where their fibres already steer machines, and in wearable platforms that merge biosensing, computation and feedback. The fact that the team has released source data through Figshare and code through Code Ocean underscores the engineering orientation of the work, inviting others to reproduce the fluid-encoding process and build on the module library.

Challenges remain before IC fibres appear in commercial garments. The reported work demonstrates individual functional fibre types and their integration, but scaling production, achieving the transistor densities of conventional silicon, and managing power delivery through textile interconnects are all open problems. The electro-quasistatic sensing mode, while elegant, will require careful engineering to remain reliable around the conductors and interference sources that surround any wearer. Yet the core achievement stands: a spinning process in which the circuit is programmed into the fibre as it forms, yielding threads that glow, compute, filter and sense, and that survive the washing machine. If the module library continues to grow, the line between textile and computer may soon be measured in micrometres rather than millimetres.

Subject of Research: Programmable microfluidic spinning of fibres containing integrated circuit modules for smart textiles

Article Title: Programmable spinning of integrated circuit fibres

Article References: Sun, F., Chen, W., Jiang, F., Wang, K., Liu, F., Hong, Y., Han, X., Zhao, M., Zhu, Y., Sun, H., Wang, H., Wang, G., & Zhu, M. (2026). Programmable spinning of integrated circuit fibres. Nature Electronics. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-026-01712-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41928-026-01712-2

Keywords: electronic textiles, microfluidic spinning, integrated circuit fibres, organic electrochemical transistors, electroluminescence, wearable electronics, soft materials, touchless sensing, semiconducting polymers, flexible electronics, smart fabrics, Nature Electronics