Stretchable circuit board technology in textile applications

Today's electronic systems are based on an assembly of components onto rigid or flexible substrates, serving perfectly the needs of traditional product fields like automotive, computing or industry electronics. On the other hand, many of the demands from emerging applications like wearable and textile electronics cannot be met if standard technologies are used for their realization. These new fields have therefore become mayor drivers for the development of novel technologies. Among these 'stretchable electronics' have attracted strong attention. Especially for textile applications the potential of electronic systems to comply with the body shape and movement will improve the user comfort dramatically. A manufacturing technology for the realization of stretchable systems by common printed circuit board techniques, based on polyurethane as a stretchable matrix material has been developed. The stretchable circuit board technology has been used to realize a number of texti le applications. As an example the realization of a fashion dress with integrated high brightness LEDs and movement sensing will be described.