Soft and Stretchable Electronics for Integration with Textiles

Nanoleq is a spinoff of the university of Zurich founded in 2017 focusing on stretchable and soft electronics integrated into textiles (smart textiles, e-textiles). The sensing technology is based on dry electrodes developed by ETH, Zurich, and Nanoleq that are sticky/adhesive (Electroskin (TM)) to reduce motion artifacts. Current generation of dry electrodes used in commercial heart rate sensor has a strap that needs to be firmly attached and you feel squeeze. The technology supports use cases from multiple verticals such as sport & fitness, wellness, rehabilitation, workwear and medical. Customers have integrated 2-20 electrodes. A high electrode count allows studying the heart vector in unprecedented detail. The soft electrodes are very suitable for children. I would like to present a few typical signal traces.
Elastic conductive tape (Phantomtape) connected to the electrodes and runs to the Phantomlink bridge that forms the interface between the textile and attached electronics. The PhantomLink connector solution is compatible with analogue and digital signals in e-textiles for ECG, EMG, EEG or for electrostimulation The Nanoleq solution is unique because not only has Nanoleq developed the technology but also the associated testing protocols for validation which is equally important.
I will discuss the integration of the components and how to make a shirt. As a last step I will elaborate over the design of analogue electronics outlining a complete hardware stack.