Electronic devices that can be folded and stretched may soon become a reality after Japanese scientists said they had developed a rubber-like material that conducts electricity.

A research team at the University of Tokyo said they had developed a malleable material that could be stretched to more than one and half times its size without disrupting the flow of current through it.

Tsuyoshi Sekitani, a research associate at the university, said that the discovery could lead to the creation of electronic circuits "which can be mounted on any place, including arbitrary curved surfaces and movable parts such as the joints of a robot's arm."

Dr Sekitani said that his team had developed the material using carbon nanotubes - long stretches of carbon molecules - that were able to conduct electricity. These were mixed into a polymer and in turn integrated with a transistor to fabricate "a rubber-like matrix."

The 20x20cm sheet was stretched by 70 per cent "without mechanical or electrical damage," Dr Sekitani reported in the journal Science.

The creation of a flexible conductor would follow similar developments in semi-conductors, which researchers have long sought to make more flexible in order to give rise to a new category of devices.

Plastic Logic, a Cambridge-based company, has several patents for plastic semi-conductors which it hopes will form the basis of a new electronic reader that allow users to read from a thin foldable page, resembling paper.

Nokia, meanwhile, has given a glimpse of a foldable mobile handset called the Morph, which relies on nanotechnology to give it flexible properties.

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