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  • Review Article
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Intrinsically stretchable transistors and integrated circuits

Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering volume 2, pages 715–735 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Skin-like soft electronics offer conformal, stable interfaces with biological tissues — including skin, heart, brain, muscle and gut — enabling health monitoring, disease diagnosis and closed-loop therapeutic interventions. Continuous, reliable data collection at the human–electronic interface is crucial for advancing both fundamental biological research and personalized health care. Towards this end, integrated circuits (ICs) made with high-performance intrinsically stretchable transistors are essential for monolithic integration with sensors for distributed signal conditioning and amplification. In this Review, we discuss the operational principles, device design, material selection and fabrication considerations that underpin the development of high-performance intrinsically stretchable transistors for wearable and implantable ICs. Key points include the need for high field-effect mobility in short-channel devices — achieved through innovations in materials, device architectures and processing — to push device performance and operation speed; mechanical robustness to maintain stable operation under large strains; low-voltage operation for safe, energy-efficient biomedical systems; and scalable fabrication methods that enable high device density, reproducibility and integration complexity. Looking ahead, advancing both device performance and integration complexity will be pivotal for realizing large-scale, multifunctional ICs that can transform applications in bioelectronics, wearable health monitoring, soft robotics and adaptive human–machine interfaces.

Key points

  • Intrinsically stretchable devices enable monolithic integration of the functional components, reduction of concentrated local strain, intimate contact with target objects and compatibility with soft tissue.

  • Developments in materials and fabrication process have promoted device scaling and integration of intrinsically stretchable electronics.

  • Improvements in materials, device engineering and fabrication processes will enable higher-performance and high-density intrinsically stretchable transistors, opening to functional circuits and systems.

  • Intrinsically stretchable integrated circuits will be the key for real-world soft applications.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2: Intrinsically stretchable transistors.
Fig. 3: Intrinsically stretchable materials.
Fig. 4: Patterning of intrinsically stretchable materials.
Fig. 5: Examples of stretchable integrated circuit components and application.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge financial support from Army Research Office (grant no. W911NF-23-1-0282). Y.N. is in part supported by a Funai Overseas Scholarship from the Funai Foundation for Information Technology and the ANRI Fellowship. Z.B. is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco investigator and an Arc Institute innovation investigator. The authors thank Y. M. Liu and S. F. Fung for their generous support of the Bao Group’s research at Stanford University. The authors thank B. Lee for illustrations and feedback on this manuscript.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Yuya Nishio, Donglai Zhong.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Yuya Nishio

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Donglai Zhong, Kyun Kyu Kim, Qianhe Liu, Can Wu, Jeffrey B.-H. Tok & Zhenan Bao

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Boris Murmann

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Contributions

Y.N. and D.Z. contributed equally to this paper. Y.N., D.Z., K.K.K., Q.L. and C.W. collected literature information. Y.N., D.Z. and Z.B. defined the scope and content. Y.N., D.Z., K.K.K., Q.L. and C.W. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Y.N., D.Z., J.B.-H.T., B.M. and Z.B. reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Zhenan Bao.

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Nishio, Y., Zhong, D., Kim, K.K. et al. Intrinsically stretchable transistors and integrated circuits. Nat Rev Electr Eng 2, 715–735 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44287-025-00220-3

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