Contacting electronics to fabric circuits with nonconductive adhesive bonding

For over two decades, different types of fabric circuits have been developed. These are fabrics with integrated electric conductors. However, a technology for contacting electronics to these circuits in a simple and reliable manner was missing. This inhibited any greater commercial success of fabric circuits as a potential means to create electronics-in-textiles applications. This paper presents a novel contacting approach based on nonconductive adhesive bonding that is both simple and very versatile concerning the choice of fabric circuit and type of electronics to be contacted. Test vehicles with two different kinds of fabric circuits were developed and exposed to different kinds of textile-typical stress. The results show that this contacting approach is very reliable. Finally, two demonstrators were developed, to show the potential of this novel process.