Light-emitting textile display with floats for electronics covering

Abstract

Purpose – Flexible light-emitting textile display is designed with floats for electronic elements covering and electronic contacts insulation what at the same time provides an opportunity to develop aesthetic design of the display in the single piece construction of material. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Display consists of interwoven electrically conductive yarns, non-conductive yarns and SMD LEDs connected to conductive yarns. Industrial jacquard weaving machine have been used, weave patterns were designed in PC-Edit software. Findings – Weave can be used as a tool to build and evolve electrotextile. Exploring weaving techniques and perceiving electronic circuit as a weave pattern, new approaches can be developed in electrotextile design field. Research limitations/implications – Connections of electronic elements and conductive textile materials still is actual problem what should be explored in further research. Practical implications – Flexible light emitting textile display can be used as output interface integrated into communication clothing by representing different animated images directly on clothing. Display also can be used for accessories, room and auto interior etc. applications. Originality/value – Paper describes method of light source integration directly into textile structure, combining functional and visual design of textile display.

Woven eTextiles in HCI — a Literature Review

“…When greater complexity is required, electronic-circuit design becomes relevant. Our survey found 15 sources putting focus primarily on electrical signalling [13,23,24,38,44,45,65,67,69,85,86,92,93,114,132] and 15 other sources in which the signalling or wiring plays a major role [3,6,37,70,72,73,82,83,94,95,97,111,115,133,134]. Simple weave [23, 24, 65, 67, 70, 134] [82, 93, 94, 111, 132, 133] F-photodetector [16] F-temperature [16] Temperature and humidity [70] EL wire [56,121] LEDs [16] Capacitive yarn [16,50] PCB [132,133] F-biosensor [16] Optical fbre [42,98,105] Plate capacitor [129] Pressure sensor [16,…”

“…To create a structure more amenable to textiles, some work has used natural materials -for instance, spinning strands of steel and cotton together [70,94,132,134]. Noninsulated tinsel, consisting of thin strips of copper foil wrapped around a core of plastic fbres [93,94,111], is similar to a copperpolyamide-fbre blend sometimes used [85] and to the silver blends reported upon [73]. Related to these is Jacquard yarn, created by surrounding several strands of thin insulated copper with a twisted or braided silk yarn, with a yarn layer optionally on top [95].…”

“…From those electricalsignalling-oriented sources with clear discussion of attachment methods, we identifed several techniques. 1) Eleven pieces mention soldering the connections to the woven structure [6,44,45,69,85,86,94,95,111,133,134]. This method, which requires access to the electrical connection, uses heat to melt solder to connect the yarns together.…”

“…Increasing the number of further weft-yarn sets enables the added yarns' use to, for example, weave patterned jacquard fabrics. Each individual yarn set can have its own properties, such as distinct colours or materials, as introduced in work by Parkova and colleagues: the authors used multiple weft systems to weave a fgurative textile with conductive yarns for signalling in weft [86] and in both weft and warp [85]. The conductive yarns foat on opposite sides of the fabric, either in parallel [86] or at the weft/warp junctions [85], and LEDs are attached to the foats.…”

Light-Emitting Textiles: Device Architectures, Working Principles, and Applications

“…Package dies and more specifically LEDs can be also integrated via weaving. In particular, Parvoka et al reported a specific weaving method able to integrate and hide the LED into the textile and this aspect is interesting to improve the aesthetics of the product (Figure 3a) [55,56].…”