Rabin Bhattacharya

Improving conduction and mechanical reliability of woven metal interconnects

We present a simple fabrication process that produces reliable electronic textile backplanes. We electroplate copper onto woven conductive yarns in order to improve the yarns conductivity as well as the reliability of electrical contact points between the conductive warp and weft yarns. This process improves the electrical performance of the woven yarns and of the warp/weft contacts by a factor of 1.22 and 3.63, respectively. Also, in mechanical tests, the electroplated textiles show improved electrical performance when subjected to mechanical strain. Furthermore, we use this process to mount electronic submounts onto the textile substrate on top of which electronic components could be easily connected, thereby creating an electronic textile backplane.

Robust fabric substrates for photonic textile applications

A fabric substrate is described for electronic textile with robust interwoven connections between the conductive yarns in it. The fabrics robustness, as a function of the electrical reliability of its conductive yarn connections, is shown to hold over large deformations.This fabric is then used to create an LED based photonic textile display. Finally, we show an example of an application that could make use of such a photonic textile system.