In the past ten years, wearable electronics underwent tremendous growth. Undoubtedly, one of the fields that led this trend is represented by biomedical applications. In this field, wearable technologies can provide unique features such as the unobtrusive monitoring of biopotentials. Polymerbased electrodes developed for this purpose can take advantage of their seamless integration in the garments. However, the available solutions exhibit fragility in relation with the stretchability of the fabric, causing significant performance degradation.In this work, this problem is tackled by a novel deposition approach based on screen-printing technology. The electrodes are deposited onto the pre-stretched fabric to ensure the full functionality during common operating conditions. To this aim, a novel PEDOT:PSS conductive ink formulation and printing procedure were conceived. In order to prove the electrode performance for surface electromyography, we printed the electrodes directly onto a commercial stretchable polyester sleeve for sport applications. The electrodes allowed to reliably record the muscular activity of the forearm with performance comparable to that of commercial gelled Ag/AgCl electrodes. The obtained results suggest that the proposed approach can be valuably used in health and fitness applications.

Stretchable screen-printed PEDOT:PSS electrodes for upper-arm surface electromyography

Spanu A.;Bonfiglio A.;Pani D.
2020-01-01

Abstract

In the past ten years, wearable electronics underwent tremendous growth. Undoubtedly, one of the fields that led this trend is represented by biomedical applications. In this field, wearable technologies can provide unique features such as the unobtrusive monitoring of biopotentials. Polymerbased electrodes developed for this purpose can take advantage of their seamless integration in the garments. However, the available solutions exhibit fragility in relation with the stretchability of the fabric, causing significant performance degradation.In this work, this problem is tackled by a novel deposition approach based on screen-printing technology. The electrodes are deposited onto the pre-stretched fabric to ensure the full functionality during common operating conditions. To this aim, a novel PEDOT:PSS conductive ink formulation and printing procedure were conceived. In order to prove the electrode performance for surface electromyography, we printed the electrodes directly onto a commercial stretchable polyester sleeve for sport applications. The electrodes allowed to reliably record the muscular activity of the forearm with performance comparable to that of commercial gelled Ag/AgCl electrodes. The obtained results suggest that the proposed approach can be valuably used in health and fitness applications.
2020
978-1-7281-1990-8
Electrodes; Electromyography; Polymers
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
Stretchable_screen-printed_PEDOTPSS_electrodes_for_upper-arm_surface_electromyography.pdf

Solo gestori archivio

Descrizione: Manuscript
Tipologia: versione editoriale (VoR)
Dimensione 710.07 kB
Formato Adobe PDF
710.07 kB Adobe PDF   Visualizza/Apri   Richiedi una copia

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11584/345138
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? 0
  • Scopus 2
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 2
social impact