Plastic Fibers with attached Sensor Chips

Objectives

• Attach integrated circuits and devices, such as a sensor or an actuator to a polyimide foil and cut the polyimide foil into small stripes
• Weave the stripes into a textile sheet
• Make predictions about the stress that acts on a woven stripe and the layers on top of the polyimide. 
• Study connections between the metal layers on the polyimide and the attached electronics

Status to date

• Successfully attached LED, temperature and humidity sensor chips to polyimide stripes
• Stripes with chips were successfully woven into textile using a commercial weaving machine and contacted with embroidery
• Stripes are contacted with conductive threads forming bus and array structures.
  
• A simulation tool was established to calculate the strain on the surfaces of a bent polyimide/metal material system.
• Textiles were washing in a standard washing machine at 30C for multiple cycles without being damaged

Publications

• C. Zysset, T. Kinkeldei, K. Cherenack, G. Tröster: Weaving electronic sensor fibers into a smart textile, Proceedings of the International Conference on Latest Advances in High-Tech Textiles and Textile-Base Materials, 2009, p 328-329
• K. Cherenack, T. Kinkeldei, C. Zysset, G. Tröster: Woven thin-film metal interconnects, Electron Device Letters, vol. 31, no. 7, 2010, p 740-742
• C. Zysset, K. Cherenack, T. Kinkeldei, G. Tröster: Weaving Integrated Circuits into Textiles, accepted for publication at 14th IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC2010)