A recent trend in the development of high mass consumption electron devices is towards electronic textiles (e-textiles), smart wearable devices, smart clothes, and flexible or printable electronics. Intrinsically soft, stretchable, flexible, Wearable Memories and Computing devices (WMCs) bring us closer to sci-fi scenarios, where future electronic systems are totally integrated in our everyday outfits and help us in achieving a higher comfort level, interacting for us with other digital devices such as smartphones and domotics, or with analog devices, such as our brain/peripheral nervous system. WMC will enable each of us to contribute to open and big data systems as individual nodes, providing real-time information about physical and environmental parameters (including air pollution monitoring, sound and light pollution, chemical or radioactive fallout alert, network availability, and so on). Furthermore, WMC could be directly connected to human brain and enable extremely fast operation and unprecedented interface complexity, directly mapping the continuous states available to biological systems. This review focuses on recent advances in nanotechnology and materials science and pays particular attention to any result and promising technology to enable intrinsically soft, stretchable, flexible WMC.

Printed electronics will bring to the consumer level great breakthroughs and unique products in the near future, shifting the usual paradigm of electronic devices and circuit boards from hard boxes and rigid sheets into flexible thin layers and bringing disposable electronics, smart tags, and so on. The most promising tool to achieve the target depends upon the availability of nanotechnology-based functional inks. A certain delay in the innovation-transfer process to the market is now being observed. Nevertheless, the most widely diffused product, settled technology, and the highest sales volumes are related to the silver nanoparticle-based ink market, representing the best example of commercial nanotechnology today. This is a compact review on synthesis routes, main properties, and practical applications.

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