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Electronics come in all shapes and sizes—but there’s been a limit on their flexibility. Now, researchers say they’ve created electronics that can be shaped in virtually any way, including bent, stretched and even tightly coiled. They published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Silicon is the principal ingredient in electronics, and it’s inflexible and brittle. To overcome this constraint, the researchers first developed one-dimensional, single-crystal silicon electronics, which they reported in 2005. The crystals could be stretched without losing their properties. Then last summer they demonstrated that they could build tiny circuits that were connected by tiny metal bridges. The final product could be bent and placed over a curved surface.