Reusable flexible dry electrodes for biomedical wearable devices

Abstract

This paper reports the fabrication and the characterization of novel reusable Flexible Dry Electrodes (FDEs), which can be employed in wearable devices for medical applications, such as bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA). Two different FDEs were fabricated exploiting two flexible substrates, i.e. polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and the deposition of the conductive layers made by silver paste and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS). Performance tests were conducted by measuring the conductivity at the skin interface and the reliability was assessed after several cycles with different disinfectant solutions and artificial sweat as corrosive agent. FDEs were then used in BIA measurements and compared with the commercial single use silver/silver chloride (Ag/AgCl) gel electrodes. The BIA values measured by the fabricated FDEs were comparable with those obtained by commercial electrodes. The results envision the promising and reliable long-term employment of the proposed FDEs in wearable and portable devices.