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Abstract-In this paper, two versions of fabric-based active electrodes are presented to provide a wearable solution for ECG monitoring clothing. The first version of active electrode involved direct attachment of surface-mountable components to a textile screenprinted circuit using polymer thick film techniques. The second version involved attaching a much smaller, thinner, and less obtrusive interposer containing the active electrode circuitry to a simplified textile circuit. These designs explored techniques for electronic textile interconnection, chip attachment to textiles, and packaging of circuits on textiles for durability. The results from ECG tests indicate that the performance of each active electrode is comparable to commercial Ag/AgCl electrodes. The interposer-based active electrodes survived a five-cycle washing test while maintaining good signal integrity.

Body movement is responsible for most of the interference during physiological data acquisition during normal daily activities. In this paper, we introduce nonwoven fabric active electrodes that provide the comfort required for clothing while robustly recording physiological data in the presence of body movement. The nonwoven fabric active electrodes were designed and fabricated using both hand- and screen-printing thick-film techniques. Nonstretchable nonwoven (Evolon 100) was chosen as the flexible fabric substrate and a silver filled polymer ink (Creative Materials CMI 112-15) was used to form a transducer layer and conductive lines on the nonwoven fabrics. These nonwoven fabric active electrodes can be easily integrated into clothing for wearable health monitoring applications. Test results indicate that nonwoven textile-based sensors show considerable promise for physiological data acquisition in wearable healthcare monitoring applications.

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