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Yun-Hsuan Chen 1,2,* , Maaike Op de Beeck 2, Luc Vanderheyden 3, Evelien Carrette 4, Vojkan Mihajlovi? 5, Kris Vanstreels 2, Bernard Grundlehner 5, Stefanie Gadeyne 4, Paul Boon 4 and Chris Van Hoof 1,2 1 KU Leuven-University of Leuven, Departement of Electrical Engineering, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, Leuven 3001, Belgium 2 IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, Heverlee 3001, Belgium 3 Datwyler Sealing Solutions, Industrieterrein Kolmen 1519, Alken 3570, Belgium 4 Department of Neurology, Ghent University Hospital, 1K12IA De Pintelaan 185, Gent 9000, Belgium 5 Holst Centre/imec-nl, High Tech Campus 31, 5656 AE Eindhoven, The Netherlands * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Received: 15 October 2014 / Revised: 22 November 2014 / Accepted: 2 December 2014 / Published: 10 December 2014 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from the 1st International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications) No AbstractConventional gel electrodes are widely used for biopotential measurements, despite important drawbacks such as skin irritation, long set-up time and uncomfortable removal. Recently introduced dry electrodes with rigid metal pins overcome most of these problems; however, their rigidity causes discomfort and pain. This paper presents dry electrodes offering high user comfort, since they are fabricated from EPDM rubber containing various additives for optimum conductivity, flexibility and ease of fabrication. The electrode impedance is measured on phantoms and human skin. After optimization of the polymer composition, the skin-electrode impedance is only ~10 times larger than that of gel electrodes. Therefore, these electrodes are directly capable of recording strong biopotential signals such as ECG while for low-amplitude signals such as EEG, the electrodes need to be coupled with an active circuit. EEG recordings using active polymer electrodes connected to a clinical EEG system show very promising results: alpha waves can be clearly observed when subjects close their eyes, and correlation and coherence analyses reveal high similarity between dry and gel electrode signals. Moreover, all subjects reported that our polymer electrodes did not cause discomfort. Hence, the polymer-based dry electrodes are promising alternatives to either rigid dry electrodes or conventional gel electrodes.Keywords: flexible polymer dry electrode; material optimization; impedance; high quality biopotential recordings; ECG; EEG; high user comfort; conductive polymer flexible polymer dry electrode; material optimization; impedance; high quality biopotential recordings; ECG; EEG; high user comfort; conductive polymer ?▼ Figures  This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). Scifeed alert for new publicationsNever miss any articles matching your research from any publisher
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