Flexible and Stretchable Electronics for E-Textiles
Abstract
The evolution of flexible and stretchable electronics has reshaped traditional textiles into intelligent wearable devices that have benefits such as sensing, communicating, computing, and making decisions in real-time. Currently, e-textile technologies are still disparate, lacking integration of the smart features of e-textiles, which include sensing, energy management, adaptive communications, and Edge AI. This chapter discusses and reviews the latest advancements in functional materials for e-textiles, fabrication technologies for e-textiles, architectural design of smart textiles, Edge AI, and applications of wearables. The chapter proposes a six-layer HFTIF for intelligent e-textiles, integrating sensing, energy management, communication, Edge AI, TinyML, Federated Learning, Explainable AI, and decision support. Lastly, the chapter presents a comparative evaluation of e-textile technologies using TRL, SWOT, and PESTLE analyses and identifies future research directions for secure, scalable, energy-efficient, and human-centered intelligent e-textile ecosystems.
