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Sustainable Textile Electronics

Project description

Circuit technologies for sustainable e-textiles

E-textiles are a growing field in electronics with key applications in personalised health, elderly care, smart agriculture, and production. However, they present significant environmental challenges, including the use of toxic materials in production and difficulties in end-of-life processing due to the combination of traditional electronics and textile components. The EU-funded STELEC project addresses these issues by developing circuit technologies for e-textiles using materials that are compatible with the lifecycle of conventional textiles and have minimal environmental impact, facilitating reuse within a circular economy. The project will use digital inkjet printing, 3D printing, and atmospheric plasma to create sustainable building blocks for textile electronics. The goal is to establish a new, environmentally friendly paradigm for e-textile development.

Objective

E-textile is rapidly developing segment of electronics with an estimated growth from 2.3 billion USD in 2021 to 6.6 billion in 2026. They facilitate many socially important applications such as personalized health or elderly care or smart agriculture and production. Unfortunately, today, e-textiles are highly problematic in terms of environmental impact. Problems range from toxic materials used for production, through energy/water requirements to the difficulty end-of-life processing systems that combine traditional electronics and textile components. The aim of this project is to develop circuit technologies for e-textiles that are based on materials that minimize environmental impact, are compatible with the life-cycle of normal textiles to facilitate easy re-use in the spirit of circular economy and can be produced (and recycled) in an energy efficient way. The main breakthroughs with respect to the current state of technology will be in three areas:
(1) A combination of digital inkjet, 3D printing and atmospheric plasma to produce sustainable textile electronics building blocks from environmentally friendly materials (e.g conducting polymers such as PEDOT:PSS and carbon based polymer nanocomposites).
(2) Going beyond embedding electronics in textile structures on substrate and layer levels as is state of the art today, and using fibrous materials (enriched with electronic properties as stipulated above) as such to create electronic components such as transistors, capacitors etc. and combine them into more complex circuits.
(3) Comprehensive, lifecycle-oriented model of the environmental impact of such e-textile technologies and their applications.
Overall STELECT will create the foundations for a new paradigm for e-textiles development that is not just environment friendly and sustainable but also fundamentally changes the way e-textiles and wearable systems are designed and built facilitating whole new application domains and associated markets.

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HORIZON-EIC - HORIZON EIC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-EIC-2023-PATHFINDERCHALLENGES-01

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Coordinator

DEUTSCHES FORSCHUNGSZENTRUM FUR KUNSTLICHE INTELLIGENZ GMBH
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 692 500,00
Address
TRIPPSTADTER STRASSE 122
67663 Kaiserslautern
Germany

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Region
Rheinland-Pfalz Rheinhessen-Pfalz Kaiserslautern, Kreisfreie Stadt
Activity type
Research Organisations
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 692 500,00

Participants (5)

Partners (3)

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