Nearly 50 years ago, Intel created the world’s first commercially produced microprocessor—the 4004 (ref. ¹), a modest 4-bit CPU (central processing unit) with 2,300 transistors fabricated using 10 μm process technology in silicon and capable only of simple arithmetic calculations. Since this ground-breaking achievement, there has been continuous technological development with increasing sophistication to the stage where state-of-the-art silicon 64-bit microprocessors now have 30 billion transistors (for example, the AWS Graviton2 (ref. ²) microprocessor, fabricated using 7 nm process technology). The microprocessor is now so embedded within our culture that it has become a meta-invention—that is, it is a tool that allows other inventions to be realized, most recently enabling the big data analysis needed for a COVID-19 vaccine to be developed in record time. Here we report a 32-bit Arm (a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) architecture) microprocessor developed with metal-oxide thin-film transistor technology on a flexible substrate (which we call the PlasticARM). Separate from the mainstream semiconductor industry, flexible electronics operate within a domain that seamlessly integrates with everyday objects through a combination of ultrathin form factor, conformability, extreme low cost and potential for mass-scale production. PlasticARM pioneers the embedding of billions of low-cost, ultrathin microprocessors into everyday objects.

近 50 年前，英特尔创造了世界上第一个商业生产的微处理器——4004（参考文献¹），这是一个普通的 4 位 CPU（中央处理器），具有 2,300 个晶体管，使用 10 微米的硅工艺技术制造，并且只能进行简单的算术运算计算。自从这一突破性成就以来，技术不断发展，技术越来越复杂，目前最先进的硅 64 位微处理器现在拥有 300 亿个晶体管（例如，AWS Graviton2（参考文献^{2 ）}) 微处理器，使用 7 纳米工艺技术制造）。微处理器现在已深深嵌入我们的文化中，以至于它已成为一项元发明——也就是说，它是一种工具，可以实现其他发明，最近还可以进行开发 COVID-19 疫苗所需的大数据分析在创纪录的时间内。在这里，我们报告了一种 32 位 Arm（一种精简指令集计算 (RISC) 架构）微处理器，该微处理器采用金属氧化物薄膜晶体管技术在柔性基板（我们称为 PlasticARM）上开发。与主流半导体行业不同，柔性电子产品通过超薄外形、一致性、极低成本和大规模生产潜力的结合，在与日常物品无缝集成的领域内运行。