Preparation and Characterization of Silk Fibroin-PANI Nanocomposites and Their Application for Electrophysiological Signals Recording

Abstract

Wearable dry electrodes are required for long-term biopotential recordings, but their availability is limited. The diagnosis of coronary heart disease is possible with ambulatory electrocardiography (ECG). For ambulatory ECG sensing, on-skin electrodes are used by conformably contacting the skin’s moving and arbitrary formed surface. However, the low skin-adhesion of electrodes restricts their use in ambulatory ECG sensing for an extended period of time. Here, it was possible to create extremely skin-adhesive and washable on-skin electrodes by developing a new composite of Poly aniline (PANI) and silk fibroin (SF). Self-adhesive property of silk fibroin - PANI electrodes was achieved by coating with silk/Ca2+ adhesive layers. These electrodes were applied to the skin to capture high-quality ECG readings for the detection of cardiac real status in order to show how they can be used to detect precise and dependable signals. Silk fibroin - PANI electrodes showed an excellent performance for ECG signals recording over different physiological states.