Abstract
To overcome drawbacks of the conventional wet Ag/AgCl electrodes, this paper proposed a novel flexible dry electrode with stacked double-micro-domes array for wearable biopotential recording system. By utilizing flexible printed circuit (FPC) substrate and fabrication technologies, we designed a unique structure of a small dome stacking on top of a large dome. Experiments results showed that the proposed electrode could partially disrupt the stratum corneum of the skin without harm: on one hand this allowed to increase the electrode–skin contacting area; on the other hand it ensured the electrode anchoring firmly on the skin surface. And the key specifications of the dry electrode, such as electrode–skin impedance (ESCI) and the signal–noise-ratio (SNR), were shown to be comparable with these of a standard wet Ag/AgCl electrode. Finally, to verify the effectiveness of the proposed electrode in the practical application, a prototype wearable ECG recording system was developed. The measured ECG waveform proved that the proposed electrode was much more flexible than the standard wet Ag/AgCl electrode and still retained good signal quality for long run with super skin compliance and comfort.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by R&D project of Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee (Project No. JSGG 2013091840947999) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 61471011).
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Lin, K., Wang, X., Zhang, X. et al. An FPC based flexible dry electrode with stacked double-micro-domes array for wearable biopotential recording system. Microsyst Technol 23, 1443–1451 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-016-2893-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-016-2893-4