Fully organic compliant dry electrodes self-adhesive to skin for long-term motion-robust epidermal biopotential monitoring

Lei Zhang,Xu He,Hao He,Jianyong Ouyang,Hongliang Ren,Shizhong Yue,Kirthika Senthil Kumar,Huxin Gao,Catherine Jiayi Cai,Changsheng Li,Raymond Chee-Seong Seet

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-18503-8

Abstract

Wearable dry electrodes are needed for long-term biopotential recordings but are limited by their imperfect compliance with the skin, especially during body movements and sweat secretions, resulting in high interfacial impedance and motion artifacts. Herein, we report an intrinsically conductive polymer dry electrode with excellent self-adhesiveness, stretchability, and conductivity. It shows much lower skin-contact impedance and noise in static and dynamic measurement than the current dry electrodes and standard gel electrodes, enabling to acquire high-quality electrocardiogram (ECG), electromyogram (EMG) and electroencephalogram (EEG) signals in various conditions such as dry and wet skin and during body movement. Hence, this dry electrode can be used for long-term healthcare monitoring in complex daily conditions. We further investigated the capabilities of this electrode in a clinical setting and realized its ability to detect the arrhythmia features of atrial fibrillation accurately, and quantify muscle activity during deep tendon reflex testing and contraction against resistance.

Highlights

Wearable dry electrodes are needed for long-term biopotential recordings but are limited by their imperfect compliance with the skin, especially during body movements and sweat secretions, resulting in high interfacial impedance and motion artifacts
Mismatching between a dry electrode and human skin can occur during body movement, which can be improved if the dry electrodes are adhesive to human skin
Uniform blend films can be prepared by casting aqueous solution consisting of PEDOT:PSS, waterborne polyurethane (WPU), and D-sorbitol (Fig. 1a, b)

Summary

Introduction

Wearable dry electrodes are needed for long-term biopotential recordings but are limited by their imperfect compliance with the skin, especially during body movements and sweat secretions, resulting in high interfacial impedance and motion artifacts. We report an intrinsically conductive polymer dry electrode with excellent self-adhesiveness, stretchability, and conductivity It shows much lower skin-contact impedance and noise in static and dynamic measurement than the current dry electrodes and standard gel electrodes, enabling to acquire high-quality electrocardiogram (ECG), electromyogram (EMG) and electroencephalogram (EEG) signals in various conditions such as dry and wet skin and during body movement. This dry electrode can be used for long-term healthcare monitoring in complex daily conditions.

Methods

Results

Conclusion