Technologies and Applications for Wearable e-Textiles

Smart textiles have been a research topic for more than 20 years. A broad range of technologies has been developed and investigated. The solutions range from conductive or otherwise functionalized yarns to integration technologies for conventional and hybrid electronics including sensors. The maturity and scalability of these technologies have been major challenge on the way to bring the research results into the market, considering that two very different industries have to join efforts for success. Better understanding of the different technological approaches and their limitations together with the development of corresponding equipment can enable the transfer to industry. Regarding the applications, research still focuses on medical applications in the areas of prophylaxis, diagnosis, monitoring, treatment and rehabilitation. These devices are typically very specialized and optimized for different locations on the body. This specialization of the devices leads to new requirements regarding the materials, integration technologies and reliability. At the same time, it is necessary to develop and verify systems in short cycles. With modular electronic systems and textile bus structures these requirements can be met.

Bio: Christine Kallmayer received a diploma in experimental physics at the University of Kaiserslautern in 1994. Afterwards she worked as a research scientist at the research center "Technologien der Mikroperipherik“ at the Technical University of Berlin. Her main field of activity was the development and investigation of interconnection technologies with the Au-Sn metallurgy for different applications, e.g. optoelectronics and the reliability of the metallurgical system. Since 1998 she is responsible for the group „System on Flex“ at Fraunhofer IZM. The main working areas are new technologies for flip chip integration on and in flex by soldering or adhesive bonding. Especially technologies for ultrathin chips are developed and investigated. The group is also developing new flexible substrate materials, e.g. based on thermoplastic polymers, together with optimized assembly technologies. A current research focus is on stretchable and conformable electronics based on textiles as well as elastomers.