Flexible Electronics and Interative Textiles

Flexible Electronics -- probably as ambiguous as "interactive-textiles" or "intelligent textiles" or any other buzz word of the day. But did you know that this industry is not only solving the hard problems that can enable interactive textile applications, but that they're gaining the momentum of a multi-billion dollar industry? How you ask? They're riding the coat-tails of the display industry. Big-screen flat panel LCD TV's are becoming cheaper because the industry learning how to process large areas more effectively (the bloated costs of yesterday are primarily an artifact of poor yeild on the line).

So then you could ask "well if the interactive textiles industry is following the trails blazed by the wildly popular ipod, why is it so much smaller and less popular?" There are several answers but essentially it boils down to the market dynamics behind the ipod. Yes the ipod is popular, but it was developed privately by one company. TV's are commoditized and the display industry as a whole is open with government funded consortiums. With time the interactive textiles industry could grow at rates that rival the display industry, but maybe the application space needs to expand beyond the ipod or iphone.

That notion aside, let's talk about why flexible electronics is vitally important to interactive-textiles as a whole. The primary reason is the advantage that flexible electronics can provide from an integration perspective. Integrating electronics into textiles is difficult enough but having to use standard bulky electronics (and packaging) can reduce the flexibility and x-factor of "feel" in the final products. Secondly, as flexible electronics matures, the roll-to-roll paradigm becomes more realistic. In the roll-to-roll paradigm, interactive-textiles can now be realized through making the textiles the host substrate. We're really only skimming the surface of what's possible, what do you think?