This paper shows how common embroidery can be used to integrate electronics into textile environment in a light and cost efficient way. A mechanism has been developed to embroider through flexible electronic modules using conductive yarn, thus creating an interconnection with other modules like sensors, batteries, textile keyboards, etc. Mold encapsulation has been found to improve the electrical contact and support the reliability of the whole system.

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The interconnection of electronics and textile circuits is still a main challenge for the fabrication of reliable smart textiles. This paper investigates the thermoplastic adhesive bonding technology. Electronic modules are bonded to textile substrates with a thermoplastic non-conductive adhesive (NCA) film. The modules are placed onto textile circuits with an NCA-film in-between. By applying pressure and heat, the adhesive melts and contact partners touch. Subsequently cooling solidifies the NCA resulting in an electrical and mechanical contact of the electronic module and the textile circuit. This paper shows the suitability of this technology for knitted, woven, non-woven and embroidered fabrics with metal coated yarns as well as with litz-wires as conductors. Besides, it shows that the interconnection process works well with thermoplastically insulated conductors. In addition, the design of interposers has been improved in respect to contact formation and miniaturization compared to previous publications. The pitch of the contact pads is set to 1.27 mm. A textile display was realized with smart RGB-Pixels, which are controlled by an I²C-bus on a quadrupolic woven substrate. It demonstrates the applicability and the potential of this technology.

This document explains different approaches to integrating electronics in textiles. It discusses reliability standards and tests for electronics in textiles. Encapsulation technologies are evaluated concerning their applicability in textile integrated electronics. Furthermore a specific assembly with embroidered wiring and embroidered interconnections has been developed and improved. Two different encapsulation technologies have been developed for this assembly. Standardized tests have been carried out to assess the reliability of the assembly and its encapsulations. Finally the achievements are critically discussed.