Screen-printed fabric electrode for electrocardiogram monitoring on commercial textiles

Abstract

Due to the low-cost fabrication, printing electronics on flexible substrates shows great potential in robotics, wearable healthcare, and persistent human-machine interfaces. Noninvasive dry-electrodes for electrocardiography (ECG) monitoring are an important technique for detecting early arrhythmias. This article describes a screen printing method for fabricating textile ECG electrodes. The biocompatible carbon ink served as the active electrochemical layer, while the silver paste acted as the conductive path, respectively. The measured results showed that the textile electrode had similar ECG signal monitoring performance compared to commercially available Ag/AgCl electrodes under conditions where the subjects were walking, stationary, and jogging. And the pre-made textile electrodes can be easily connected to the sports bra for monitoring daily exercise ECG. This study demonstrated the feasibility of utilizing textile electrodes for applications in the wearable healthcare industry.