Textile Electronic Circuits from Laser‐Patterned Conductive Fabric

Abstract

Textile electronics have shown very promising results in remote health monitoring or personal thermal management. Meanwhile, textile‐based generators are researched to harvest energy from human motion and supply the electronics required for signal acquisition and transmission. Hence, there is a need to fully integrate electronic circuits directly onto textile to achieve self‐powered smart garments. Herein, a thermoadhesive conductive fabric is considered to realize textile electronic circuits. A laser‐based method is developed to pattern the circuit design. After optimizing the spatial resolution, the electrical and mechanical resistances of the resulting textile conductive tracks are evaluated. Heterogeneous interconnections with rigid electronic components are considered with different methods such as soldering and bonding. The interconnections are characterized and compared regarding their electrical contact resistances. Finally, demonstrators are realized to show a proof of concept of “textronic circuits.”

Enhancing Electrical and Mechanical Properties of Conductive Textile for Wearable Embedded Systems Through Copper Electroplating

“…In a prior study, textile conductive tracks with a width of 0.7 mm, fabricated from the same conductive fabric, demonstrated an elongation at break superior to 20%, [ 34 ] a property deemed advantageous for the development of textronic circuits. It is important that the electrodeposition process does not significantly compromise the stretchability of textronic circuits of the conductive tracks when considering the wearability of textiles.…”

“…Elongation at Break of Conductive Tracks: The evaluation of elongation at break of conductive tracks was done on 0.7 mm wide tracks, which in a prior study, [34] demonstrated an elongation at electrical break exceeding 20%. These tracks were cut and laminated on a polyester dogbones with the method described in Section 2.2.…”

“…The general method to pattern and laminate a textile circuit onto a textile substrate has already been thoroughly described and illustrated in a previous study. [ 34 ] Nonetheless, the laser cutter that had been used cannot cut metallic layers thicker than a few microns. Therefore, the LPKF ProtoLaser S4 was used to cut the electrodeposited fabric.…”

“…The laser patterning and lamination of a conductive textile to electronic textile circuits, so‐called textronic circuits, has already been presented in our previous work. [ 34 ] In this research, electrodeposition was employed as a strategy to enhance the electrical conductivity of the resultant textronic circuits. Additionally, this method was instrumental in facilitating and reinforcing the soldered connections between the textile‐based components and conventional electronic elements.…”

Smart E-textiles: A review of their aspects and applications

“…53,54 A thermo adhesive conductive fabric is considered to realize textile electronic circuits, which is developed by a laser-based method. 55 Cleaning a substrate for the physical vapor deposition technology is one of preliminary processes; the resistance of the layers has been increased in comparison to the structures produced on the unmodified substrate when the modification of a textile composite substrate with the laser technology influence on the surface resistance of silver structures. 56 The main categories of electronic devices/technology for wearable e-textiles developments were listed in Table 2, they are integrated into E-textiles.…”