8. Electronics Integration

In the past two decades, wearable computing has brought together different fields of research as well as industry. The idea of wearing a computer as a part of the clothing led to an increased effort in both industry and research to seamlessly integrate electronics and textiles. Having significantly different properties, textiles and electronics pose a challenge to mechanical, material, textile and electronics engineers. To address these challenges, in this chapter, different levels of textile-electronics integration are analysed: fibre level, textile material level and garment level. At the fibre level, microelectronics (e.g. transistors and sensors) are either directly fabricated on fibres or bonded onto the fibres using a specialised fabrication process. At the level of the textile material, textile is manufactured using conventional and conductive fibres. In later steps, conductive fibres are modified and interfaced with electronics. At the garment level, textile is the substrate material and the integration happens on the surface of a garment. Embroidery technique, lamination or screen printing are used to integrate the electronics on the textile. The principles of textile-electronics integration are described using representative examples from state-of-the-art research.