Soldering electronics to smart textiles by pulsed Nd:YAG laser

Abstract

Experts attest the smart textiles market will have high growth potential during the next ten years. Laser soldering is considered to be a good contacting method because it is a contactless process. For this reason, it is intended to investigate the contacting process of printed circuit boards (PCB) to isolated conductive textile strips by means of a ytterbium-doped fiber laser (1064 nm). During the investigation, the copper strands in the textile tape were stripped by the laser and soldered to the PCB without any transport of the textile. Therefore, we investigated different sets of parameters by means of a design of experiment (DoE) for different types of solder pastes. Finally, the joinings were electrically analyzed using a contact resistance test, optically with a REM examination, and mechanically using a peeling test.