title: Electrical characteristics of conductive yarns and textile electrodes for medical applications.
abstract: Clothing with conductive textiles for health care applications has in the last decade been of an upcoming research interest. An advantage with the technique is its suitability in distributed and home health care. The present study investigates the electrical properties of conductive yarns and textile electrodes in contact with human skin, thus representing a real ECG-registration situation. The yarn measurements showed a pure resistive characteristic proportional to the length. The electrodes made of pure stainless steel (electrode A) and 20% stainless steel/80% polyester (electrode B) showed acceptable stability of electrode potentials, the stability of A was better than that of B. The electrode made of silver plated copper (electrode C) was less stable. The electrode impedance was lower for electrodes A and B than that for electrode C. From an electrical properties point of view we recommend to use electrodes of type A to be used in intelligent textile medical applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden. linra@imt.liu.se
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rattfält
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lindén
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hult
authors.forename: Lena
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Berglin
authors.forename: Per
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ask
mesh_terms: D001698:Biomedical Engineering; D003020:Clothing; D003300:Copper; D004553:Electric Conductivity; D017097:Electric Impedance; D006801:Humans; D008839:Microelectrodes; D011091:Polyesters; D012834:Silver; D013193:Stainless Steel; D013686:Telemetry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013784:Textiles
chemical_list: D011091:Polyesters; D013193:Stainless Steel; D012834:Silver; D003300:Copper