Objective
Consumers are increasingly taking responsibility for their health and physical condition: they want to manage their own health and feel good, by monitoring a variety of functions of the human body (ECG, heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen saturation, temperature, etc) and activity related data (speed and acceleration obtained from body sensors) while doing sports, or throughout the day, or during recovery from illness.
Physically such monitors consist of three technology elements:
- Unobtrusive sensors -small, wireless, virtually invisible, low weight- that measure relevant (body) parameters.
- Algorithms that interpret these measurements.
- Connectivity, preferably wireless to transfer the data to a body network for further processing.
Direct skin contact allows for full measurement opportunities, but wearing comfort requires that the monitor will not only be flexible, but also of stretchable and soft-touch nature. In the STELLA project the development of such stretchable and soft-touch substrates, including electronic assembly on these substrates is proposed.
Processes will be developed to produce a stretchable conductive pattern that can be composed of printed wiring, discrete wiring, or a combination thereof formed in a predetermined arrangement on a stretchable common base substrate. The soft-touch will be achieved by using base materials with a different chemistry than what is used to day for flex substrates. Assembly methods for component mounting und interconnection, based on existing platform techniques, will have to be adapted.
Innovations from the proposed STELLA project include:
- New stretchable substrates with stretchable conductor pattern
- Assembly technology on stretchable substrates, based on lead-free reflow soldering
- Integration methods for electronics in stretchable products
The new technology will be proven through a number of demonstrators for the end-users in the project.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
IP - Integrated ProjectCoordinator
69469 WEINHEIM
Germany