Roll-to-roll fabrication of silver/silver chloride coated yarns for dry electrodes and applications in biosignal monitoring

Katherine Le; Saeid Soltanian; Harishkumar Narayana; Amir Servati; Peyman Servati; Frank Ko

doi:10.1038/s41598-023-48245-8

Roll-to-roll fabrication of silver/silver chloride coated yarns for dry electrodes and applications in biosignal monitoring

Sci Rep. 2023 Dec 1;13(1):21182. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-48245-8.

Authors

Katherine Le¹, Saeid Soltanian², Harishkumar Narayana², Amir Servati², Peyman Servati³, Frank Ko⁴

Affiliations

¹ Materials Engineering Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada. lekather@student.ubc.ca.
² Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada.
³ Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada. peymans@ece.ubc.ca.
⁴ Materials Engineering Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada. frank.ko@ubc.ca.

Abstract

This work presents a continuous roll-to-roll electrochemical coating system for producing silver/silver chloride (Ag/AgCl)-coated yarns, and their application in e-textile electrodes for biosignal monitoring. Ag/AgCl is one of the most preferred electrode materials as an interface between the conductive backbone of an electrode and skin. E-textile Ag/AgCl-coated multi-filament nylon yarns offer stable, flexible, and breathable alternatives to standard rigid or flexible film-based Ag/AgCl electrodes. The developed system allows for highly controlled process parameters to achieve stable and uniform AgCl film deposition on Ag-coated nylon yarns. The electrical, electrochemical properties, and morphology of the coated yarns were characterized. Dry electrodes were fabricated and could measure electrocardiogram (ECG) signals with comparable performance to standard gel electrodes. Ag/AgCl e-textile electrodes demonstrated high stability, with low average polarization potential (1.22 mV/min) compared with Ag-coated electrodes (3.79 mV/min), low impedance (below 2 MΩ, 0.1-150 Hz), and are excellent candidates for heart rate detection and monitoring.