TEX-Hype

Ageing of population is one of the main problems that the European population is facing today, raising questions on the sustainability of the social health care system in the future. Remotely monitoring patients that are recovering from an operation can reduce hospitalization days and prevent post-operation complications.

TEX-Hype (TEXtile Integrated HYbrid Printed Electronics) aims at the development of novel technologies for smart textiles, enabling a seamless integration of electronics and sensors into garments and the development of remote patient monitoring systems. TEX-Hype will concentrate on improving the level of integration of electronics in textiles by pursuing a hybrid approach: a stretchable technology that allows the integration of electronics in textile products in a way that their typical flexible/elastic nature is preserved.

Currently, most smart textile products are available only at prototype level since they require expensive and labour-intense processes that are not scalable, and therefore cannot be used to produce the required large quantities. Additionally, functional materials are produced with different technologies, which makes it more difficult to combine them in a single process that is compatible with the conventional textile industry. Hybrid printed electronics can solve this problem by using a combination of traditional silicon-based electronic devices, flexible electronic devices and printed systems. However, this hybridization faces the challenge that existing electronic components are usually not compatible with textile substrates.

Tex-Hype aims to overcome these barriers of manufacturability by developing a hybrid printed electronic process which can easily be scaled to large areas. In the process, methods already compatible with the textile industry are used, such as multi-layer inkjet printing, pick & place, knitting and embroidery to be able to realize components of future application-oriented electronic systems for sensor data acquisition, storage, energy management and communication.