Abstract
This study investigates alternative material compositions for flexible silicone-based dry electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes to improve the performance lifespan while maintaining high-fidelity transmission of EEG signals. Electrode materials were fabricated with varying concentrations of silver-coated silica and silver flakes to evaluate their electrical, mechanical, and EEG transmission performance. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis of the initial electrode development identified some weak points in the sensors’ construction, including particle pull-out and ablation of the silver coating on the silica filler. The newly-developed sensor materials achieved significant improvement in EEG measurements while maintaining the advantages of previous silicone-based electrodes, including flexibility and non-toxicity. The experimental results indicated that the proposed electrodes maintained suitable performance even after exposure to temperature fluctuations, 85% relative humidity, and enhanced corrosion conditions demonstrating improvements in the environmental stability. Fabricated flat (forehead) and acicular (hairy sites) electrodes composed of the optimum identified formulation exhibited low impedance and reliable EEG measurement; some initial human experiments demonstrate the feasibility of using these silicone-based electrodes for typical lab data collection applications.
Highlights
Bio-signals, such as electrocardiogram (ECG), electroencephalogram (EEG), electrooculogram (EOG), and electromyogram (EMG), are important tools in monitoring people’s physiological conditions for both research and clinical applications [1]
The feasibility of using polymer electrodes to collect an EEG signal was demonstrated in a previous study [14], the polymer electrodes did not exhibit reproducible performance over an extended period
Electrode microstructure, electrodes that demonstrated a loss of performance were imaged using in the electrode microstructure, electrodes that demonstrated a loss of performance were imaged scanning electron microscopy (SEM) on the top and bottom electrode surface (Figure 2a)
Summary
Bio-signals, such as electrocardiogram (ECG), electroencephalogram (EEG), electrooculogram (EOG), and electromyogram (EMG), are important tools in monitoring people’s physiological conditions for both research and clinical applications [1]. Several critical challenges associated with novel, dry EEG sensor development need to be addressed to enable widespread implementation and adoption by the wider EEG community These challenges include improved comfort for the wearer, ease of application, the ability to penetrate the hair to provide adequate contact with the scalp, improved durability to provide long performance lifetimes, improved safety outside of a laboratory environment, and consistent performance over long measurement times [17]. The sensors were examined for environmental stability, deformation-dependent electrical performance, and transmission of an actual EEG signal These tests were designed to determine the feasibility of using a silicone-based sensor to address the critical challenges limiting the implementation of dry electrodes in EEG systems
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