Screen Printing Method for Conductive Textiles

Using screen printing to create electrical circuits on textiles has many potential applications. One of the applications is in the field of wearable technology, where conductive lines can be printed on clothes or accessories to create functional circuits. These may include sensors, antennas, and other electronic components. Another application is smart textiles, where conductive lines can be printed on textiles to create interactive surfaces or circuits that respond to environmental stimuli such as temperature or humidity. The ink is printed on the textile surface using the screen-printing technique, creating a pattern of conductive lines that can be used to form electrical circuits. Today, conductive paste is used instead of traditional ink to create electrical circuits on textiles. After screen printing on textiles, various types of finishing can be performed to improve the functionality and durability of the printed electronic circuits. Textile structures from different fibrous mixtures made by knitting or woven technology were used to make electrical circuits by the serigraphic method with conductive adhesive paste SW604 from Tatsuta. The screen-printing process consisted of six steps. Two iterations were made with a path width of 1 mm and a distance between 10 and 5 mm paths. The design of the serigraphic nets was carried out in the CAM—GerbTool program and later the conversion from the Gerber file to the SVG vector format was carried out. The turn key device was also used for depositing electronic component solder paste. Four depositions were performed for each sample type, respectively C1, C2, C3, and T3, which were thermally treated at 130 °C for 30 min after deposition. The structures were analyzed by optical inspection and electrical testing with a Velleman DVM4200 Multimeter to determine electrical continuity and resistance.