Through their ability to conform and couple to nonplanar surfaces, flexible electronics are opening up a new realm of applications. The potential to monitor and control internal biological systems is particularly appealing, especially if it can be done with minimal invasiveness. Most current approaches rely on thin-film supporting substrates that, although flexible, limit a device’s ability to intimately interface with its surroundings. Charles Lieber and colleagues at Harvard University now demonstrate so-called mesh electronics that can be loaded into a syringe and injected into specific regions of manmade or biological cavities.

Shown here is one of the team’s polymer mesh structures being injected into an aqueous solution. The mesh is several centimeters long and 2 millimeters across, yet it emerges smoothly from the needle’s 95-micron-diameter opening. The polymer ribbons are 20 microns wide and less than 1 micron thick, and they meet at a 45° angle. Within the longitudinal ribbons...

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