People are becoming more and more reliant on their tablets, mobile phones, and other portable gadgets that assist them find the way in everyday life. But these devices are prone to being unsuccessful, often due to small defects in their complicated electronics, which can be caused due to frequent use. Recently, a document in this week’s Nature Electronics gives information of an innovation from scientists at the ASRC (Advanced Science Research Center) at The City University at The Graduate Center of New York that offers healthy defense in opposition to circuitry injury that impacts transmission of signal.

The breakthrough was made in the Andrea Alù’s lab. Alù is the director of the Photonics Initiative by ASRC. Alù and his associates from New York’s City College, Tel Aviv University, and University of Texas at Austin were encouraged by the influential work of 3 British scientists who won the Noble Prize in 2016 in Physics for their invention, which clarified that specific characteristics of matter (such as conductivity of electricity) can be maintained in specific materials in spite of incessant changes in the form or shape of matter.

This idea is related with topology—a branch of math that revises the characteristics of space that are conserved below incessant deformations. “In the last couple of years there has been a sturdy interest in interpreting this idea of matter topology to light propagation from material science,” claimed Alù to the media in an interview.

“We attained 2 objectives with this project: First and foremost, we displayed that we can utilize the science of topology to ease healthy propagation of electromagnetic waves in circuit and electronics components. Next, we displayed that the natural sturdiness related with this phenomena of topology can be self-provoked by the signal flowing in the circuit, and that we can attain this sturdiness employing rightfully customized nonlinearities in arrays of circuit.”