Flexible Electronic Systems on Plastic Substrates and Textiles for Smart Wearable Technologies

The future era of hyperconnected information technology demands smart wearable devices, which provide ubiquitous human-oriented service platforms and imperceptible computing with hands-free and lightweight gadgets. Wearable devices have progressively developed from accessories such as glasses, wrist bands, and watches to embedded types in fibers or textiles, skin tattoos, and even implanted in the user's body. As a crucial component of smart applications, the flexible electronic system should contain embedded active electronic components such as transistors and integrated circuitry for processing data acquired in sensors and transmitting them to wireless communication systems. The substrates of these flexible electronic systems have also expanded from flexible plastic substrates to conformable ones such as fabrics and textiles. Here, recent progresses in flexible electronic systems, composed of transistor-based circuitry and active matrix built on plastics or textile substrates, with an emphasis on fabrication using the conventional technology for electronic materials, are reviewed. In addition, emerging application areas of smart wearable technologies in a health monitoring system are also presented.