Adaptive Conductive Systems: Enabling Deformable Electronics Through Engineered Materials, Circuits, and Intelligent Systems

Abstract

The rise of intelligent systems exacerbates scenario-specific limitations in conventional rigid electronics, revealing critical compatibility gaps across emerging application fields such as wearable devices, bioelectronics, soft robotics, human–machine interfaces, etc. Adaptive conductive systems serve as critical enablers for next-generation deformable electronics through engineering deformable conductors, innovating reconfigurable circuit topologies, and implementing intelligent systems, ensuring robust electrical connectivity and dynamic compliance in variable operating environments. This review presents the research advances of adaptive conductive systems from the perspective of material innovation, circuit interconnection design, system integration, and applications. Deformable conductors consist of substrates and conductive materials with their independent intrinsic properties and synergistic effects, structural designs and fabrication methods of conductive circuits with specialized stretchable configurations, as well as intelligent systems constructed via signal processing, machine learning, and coherent integration, are systematically summarized and reviewed. Finally, current challenges and future research perspectives of adaptive conductive systems are outlined, offering deep insights into research directions and strategies.