Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZMApplause
SMART PATCHES, which can be used for vital signs monitoring, are now available on the market and are used for a variety of useful clinical applications. This has already led to a paradigm shift in the diagnosis of multiple diseases - e.g. atrial fibrillation.
As part of the project APPLAUSE, a new type of patch architecture was implemented in cooperation with the partners and at the same time new integration technologies were examined and developed in order to eliminate the previous limitations.
The work of the group System on Flex focused on the development of patch integration in various stages. The basis was the stretchable printed circuit board (SCB) based on polyurethane. For the integration approach that could be implemented at short notice, the electronics were mounted on the SCBs in the form of 2 SiP modules. For future generations of smart patches, it has been investigated how ultra-thin chips (20 µm) can be embedded in high-density PI substrates, which are then in turn embedded in SCB to integrate the electronics in a patch as thin as 100 µm.
