Sony’s Tokyo lab is looking to introduce magnetically inflatable gadgets. The body and screen of folding gadgets would be made from a flexible polymer containing conductive rubber bracing struts filled with a gel of aluminosilicate particles suspended in silicone oil. When a current is passed through the struts, the particles clump together and harden the gel, making the gadget solid enough to use. Sony has found that it would take very little power to make such a folding device harden, so the drain on its battery should be low.
This is similar to a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts idea to use superconducting wire to magnetically inflate large structures and ships in space
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