A Cost-Effective and Easy-to-Fabricate Conductive Velcro Dry Electrode for Durable and High-Performance Biopotential Acquisition

作者：Jun Guo, Xuanqi Wang, Ruiyu Bai, Zimo Zhang, Huazhen Chen, Kai Xue, Chuang Ma, Dawei Zang, Erwei Yin, Kunpeng Gao, Bowen Ji · 发表于：Biosensors · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.3390/bios14090432 · 被引用次数：7 · 研究领域：Neuroscience and Neural Engineering、Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials、Muscle activation and electromyography studies

Compared with the traditional gel electrode, the dry electrode is being taken more seriously in bioelectrical recording because of its easy preparation, long-lasting ability, and reusability. However, the commonly used dry AgCl electrodes and silver cloth electrodes are generally hard to record through hair due to their flat contact surface. Claw electrodes can contact skin through hair on the head and body, but the internal claw structure is relatively hard and causes discomfort after being worn for a few hours. Here, we report a conductive Velcro electrode (CVE) with an elastic hook hair structure, which can collect biopotential through body hair. The elastic hooks greatly reduce discomfort after long-time wearing and can even be worn all day. The CVE electrode is fabricated by one-step immersion in conductive silver paste based on the cost-effective commercial Velcro, forming a uniform and durable conductive coating on a cluster of hook microstructures. The electrode shows excellent properties, including low impedance (15.88 kΩ @ 10 Hz), high signal-to-noise ratio (16.0 dB), strong water resistance, and mechanical resistance. After washing in laundry detergent, the impedance of CVE is still 16% lower than the commercial AgCl electrodes. To verify the mechanical strength and recovery capability, we conducted cyclic compression experiments. The results show that the displacement change of the electrode hook hair after 50 compression cycles was still less than 1%. This electr...