Markus Weder

Embroidered Electrode with Silver/Titanium Coating for Long-Term ECG Monitoring

For the long-time monitoring of electrocardiograms, electrodes must be skin-friendly and non-irritating, but in addition they must deliver leads without artifacts even if the skin is dry and the body is moving. Todays adhesive conducting gel electrodes are not suitable for such applications. We have developed an embroidered textile electrode from polyethylene terephthalate yarn which is plasma-coated with silver for electrical conductivity and with an ultra-thin titanium layer on top for passivation. Two of these electrodes are embedded into a breast belt. They are moisturized with a very low amount of water vapor from an integrated reservoir. The combination of silver, titanium and water vapor results in an excellent electrode chemistry. With this belt the long-time monitoring of electrocardiography (ECG) is possible at rest as well as when the patient is moving.

Controlling the release from silver electrodes by titanium adlayers for health monitoring.

UNLABELLED Beside cancer, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of deaths worldwide. For medical diagnosis electrocardiography (ECG) is only a powerful predicting tool if the sensed cardiac cycle involves a high signal to noise ratio and reduced artefacts over a long term. The interface of the electrodes to the biological system is therefore improved with a novel textile system. The textile fiber therein is a 100nm silver-coated yarn to improve the signal quality and the reliability of the ECG signals. Long term diagnosis involves a silver release to the applied tissue surface. It is known, that a high silver release can cause a cytotoxic effect on human cells. To prevent cytotoxicity but still enabling good electrical conductivity accompanied by positive antibacterial properties of silver we developed a nanoscaled TiOx adlayer. The biological and electrical properties of these novel electrode systems are investigated and described in the manuscript. FROM THE CLINICAL EDITOR The detection of cardiovascular disease using electrocardiography (ECG) usually involves the attachment of electrodes on the skin. In this paper, the authors here described a novel textile system using silver-coated yarn, to provide the interface of the electrodes to the biological system. To prevent sustained high silver release that may lead to cytotoxicity, a nanoscaled TiOx adlayer was developed and added to the novel textile electrode.