Materials and Concepts for Textile Sensor Systems

In recent years, the integration of electronics in textiles has gained increasing attention. In order to make the step towards industrial manufacturing of wearable electronics as well as smart technical textiles it is necessary to develop modular concepts as well as integration processes suitable for high volume production. By introducing new concepts for electronic packaging and interconnects, a seamless, comfortable and robust integration of electronics in textiles is possible. Besides the large area technical textiles with integrated sensors for structural health monitoring and environmental conditions, smart garments for the monitoring of movement and physiological parameters play the most important role. These systems can cover various aspects: prevention, diagnosis, therapy and rehabilitation. For these applications sensors can be textile based but also miniaturized conventional sensors can be required. Different polymers and metals can be used as yarns, printable pastes or foils to realize a broad range of measurement principles. While the performance of textile and polymer sensors cannot compete with conventional sensors, the mechanical properties of these materials allow completely new applications, e.g. in strain measurements. The mechanical reliability is essential for smart textiles. Especially different degrees of stretchability and drapeability have to be achieved while maintaining the sensor properties. Various diagnostic sensor systems have been developed over the last decade and the feasibility of ECG and EMG is proven, there are not a lot of products on the market yet. Systems which fulfill lower requirements can be used e.g. in prevention. Currently a major trend in prevention can be seen in posture and movement monitoring as the number of patients having problems with their musculoskeletal system grows continuously. This type of application has the advantage to be also applicable in sports where the barriers for market entrance are much lower.