High-tech, flexible, wearable electronic devices, like those used for health monitoring, could potentially save your life – as long as they work. If the device has a sudden, complete malfunction due to electrical disconnection, it becomes frustratingly unusable and at great expense.

However, new research from a team of mechanical engineers at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign provides a readily adoptable solution: by inserting an atom-thick layer within conventional metal electrodes, the researchers were able to improve the strength and stability of electronic devices by several orders of magnitude.....