Preparation and properties of carbon fiber/polyester electrocardiogram monitoring embroidery electrode

Aiming at the preparation of a biocompatible human electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring electrode for wearable electronic clothing for medical care, a new carbon fiber/polyester embroidery fabric electrode was developed by embroidering carbon fiber/polyester composite filaments to form a conductive material. The electrical properties and cytotoxicity of the electrodes were tested and analyzed. A self-developed wearable belt ECG monitoring system was used to evaluate the quality of the human body ECG signal collected by the carbon fiber/polyester fabric electrodes in comparison with silver-plated polyamide/polyester embroidery electrodes. The results demosntrate that the silver plated electrodes had better electrical properties, but for long-term ECG signal monitoring the impedance of the carbon fiber/polyester electrodes appeared to have similar performance to that of the silver plated electrodes. Compared with the medical gel electrode, the ECG signals collected from the two types of embroidery electrodes demonstrate good quality, meeting the needs for medical diagnosis. Cytotoxicity test revealed that silver-plated electrodes were highly cytotoxic with a cell survival rate of only 3%, whilst for the carbon based electrodes the cell survival rate was 107% with nil cytotoxicity. The research show that the embroidery carbon based electrodes have good biocompatibility and meets the test standard of medical materials in vitro. Copyright No content may be reproduced or abridged without authorization.