Symposium F.FL03—Flexible, Wearable Electronics and Textiles
The rapidly evolving technology developments in the flexible materials space on both polymer-based planar films and 3D forms, such as textiles, are enabling novel applications for health and information wearables applications (i.e. Internet of The Body). At its core, wearable electronics applications are critically linked to the interrelationship of materials, process and system design which should be inspired by reliability in manufacturing and data acquired their incorporation in a wearable system. This symposium will aim to provide a forum for collaborative discussions around technical presentation on recent developments in four primary themes, each with a primary focus on electronics for flexible planar films and on textile for the application to wearable electronic applications: 1) Novel materials and processing techniques for scale-ability of electronic materials on flexible films and textiles; 2) Structure design and modeling for enhancing flexibility and stretch of electronic materials on flexible films and textiles; 3) Advanced methods on the assessment of flexible materials and their applied use in wearables, including methods in human trial studies; and 4) Opportunities and use-case criteria for future wearables applications. Of particular interest in this symposium are the advancements in thin film 3D printing and low temperature processing of the broad range of materials, from organic, inorganic and hybrid conducting and dielectric materials. From a textile perspective, this would also include patterning designs of device architectures using vapor and solution based processing. Applications will be explored with a focus on integrate wearables for multimodal sensing, energy harvesting, and energy storage that are validated based on their use-case analysis and human-performance validation. Lastly, a focus will be provided on industrial research needs that meets the needs of scaling opportunities for product development from the lab to market.