Potential Ways to Manufacture Wearable Metal Electrodes for the Long-term Biosignal Monitoring

Currently in wearable welfare and healthcare products are used textile and polymer electrodes. Thus these soft electrodes are easy to integrate, product maintaining is simple and they are reasonably comfortable to wear, their measurement reliability will deteriorate over time. They are vulnerable to motion artefacts, the conductive material wears out in washings, and in addition material wetting causes signal changes. In this study, similar electrodes than is in common heartrate straps were manufactured. The aim was to find a substitute material for the reliable long-term electrode. We chose untreated and micro-etched steel, silver, electroplated platinum, gold, rhodium and screen-printed silver and compared them with commercial available textile and polymer electrodes. Different non-textile material choices and manufacturing methods for the electrodes are discussed. According to our research, metal electrodes have the potential to act as long-term monitoring electrodes; materials keep moisture on the skin and the electrode interface, without irritating skin.