The functional and sensory augmentation of living structures, such as human skin and plant epidermis, with electronics can be used to create platforms for health management and environmental monitoring. Ideally, such bioelectronic interfaces should not obstruct the inherent sensations and physiological changes of their hosts. The full life cycle of the interfaces should also be designed to minimize their environmental footprint. Here we report imperceptible augmentation of living systems through in situ tethering of organic bioelectronic fibres. Using an orbital spinning technique, substrate-free and open fibre networks—which are based on poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate—can be tethered to biological surfaces, including fingertips, chick embryos and plants. We use customizable fibre networks to create on-skin electrodes that can record electrocardiogram and electromyography signals, skin-gated organic electrochemical transistors and augmented touch and plant interfaces. We also show that the fibres can be used to couple prefabricated microelectronics and electronic textiles, and that the fibres can be repaired, upgraded and recycled.

From capturing your breath to “floating” 3D electronics, inflight printing of tiny, invisible conducting fibers does the magic.

Imprinting “sticky” features on the surfaces of common non-sticky flexible materials, such as paper, textile, and polymeric films produces a myriad of adhesive tapes that we use in our daily lives. Recently, the rise of flexible electronics has harnessed the distinct adhesive behavior of adhesive tapes to achieve special scientific and engineering purposes. In this review, recent advances including the structures, properties, mechanisms, and functionalities of adhesive tapes and relevant flexible smart electronics are summarized. We provide a key focus on how the distinct adhesive behavior of adhesive tapes contributes to the redesign and engineering of flexible electronics via physical and/or chemical modifications. The applications of these flexible smart electronics enabled by adhesive tapes are widespread, including high-performance sensors, energy storage/conversion devices, medical and healthcare patches, etc. Finally, we discuss unmet needs and current challenges in the development of adhesive tape-enabled materials and techniques for flexible electronics. With ongoing material and technical innovations, adhesive tape-related electronic products are expected to revolutionize our lifestyle and lead us into the era of artificial intelligence.

Embryonic tissues undergoing shape change draw mechanical input from extraembryonic substrates. In avian eggs, the early blastoderm disk is under the tension of the vitelline membrane (VM). Here we report that the chicken VM characteristically downregulates tension and stiffness to facilitate stage-specific embryo morphogenesis. Experimental relaxation of the VM early in development impairs blastoderm expansion, while maintaining VM tension in later stages resists the convergence of the posterior body causing stalled elongation, failure of neural tube closure, and axis rupture. Biochemical and structural analysis shows that VM weakening is associated with the reduction of outer-layer glycoprotein fibers, which is caused by an increasing albumen pH due to CO₂ release from the egg. Our results identify a previously unrecognized potential cause of body axis defects through mis-regulation of extraembryonic tissue tension.

Wearable silent speech systems hold significant potential for restoring communication in patients with speech impairments. However, seamless, coherent speech remains elusive, and clinical efficacy is still unproven. Here, we present an AI-driven intelligent throat (IT) system that integrates throat muscle vibrations and carotid pulse signal sensors with large language model (LLM) processing to enable fluent, emotionally expressive communication. The system utilizes ultrasensitive textile strain sensors to capture high-quality signals from the neck area and supports token-level processing for real-time, continuous speech decoding, enabling seamless, delay-free communication. In tests with five stroke patients with dysarthria, IT’s LLM agents intelligently corrected token errors and enriched sentence-level emotional and logical coherence, achieving low error rates (4.2% word error rate, 2.9% sentence error rate) and a 55% increase in user satisfaction. This work establishes a portable, intuitive communication platform for patients with dysarthria with the potential to be applied broadly across different neurological conditions and in multi-language support systems.