The present paper presents a proceeding to prepare partially conductive textile structures as basic substrates to integrate sensors and microelectronic devices into textiles. The proceeding is based on two steps. The first is to create a textile prestructure by conventional textile technologies, such as Jacquard weaving, embroidery etc. using silver-coated polyamide threads. The second is a galvanic and/or electrochemical treatment of the textile prestructure. It will be shown that galvanic and electrochemical treatment of such structures permit a change in the conductivity of two to three orders of magnitude, modification of the surface as it is needed to get sensor properties, and insulation or encapsulation of the conducting structure.

Passive transponder labels are available in a variety of types mainly for logistic purposes which require higher functionality and/or higher reliability than the conventional barcodes allow.Smart labels for textiles either for production, logistics or professional laundry have to meet different requirements from these applications. They have to be ultrathin and very reliable under conditions unusual for electronics (washing, high pressure,. . .). Therefore the realization of textile transponders has become possible only recently with the development of thin silicon chips. Such chips are flexible and can overcome high mechanical load. They can he easily encapsulated and can resist the extreme conditions of a washing process.In order to achieve high readout distances (0.5 ... 2 m) the antennas have to enclose an area of > 6 an2, The reliability of flexible substrates in this size during washing procedures is not suficient. Therefore textile based antennas have to be produced. The transponder IC's have to he assembled to conductive yarn. The module also needs encapsulation to protect the IC from humidity, chemicals etc.. This requires new technologies especially as the dimensions and tolerances between microelectronic components and textiles differ by orders of magnitude. The development of these technologies will be the hasis for the realization of textile based wearable electronic assistants which will be a key component of future ubiquitous computing. This paper presents a concept to realize textile based transponders, the electrical interconnections to conductive yarn and first experimental results.