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Electrical characteristics of conductive yarns and textile electrodes for medical applications

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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.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by a fund of the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Linda Rattfält, Peter Hult & Per Ask

  2. Department of Computer Science and Electronics, Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden

    Maria Lindén

  3. The Swedish School of Textiles, University College of Borås, Borås, Sweden

    Lena Berglin

Authors
  1. Linda Rattfält
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  2. Maria Lindén
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  3. Peter Hult
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  4. Lena Berglin
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  5. Per Ask
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Correspondence to Linda Rattfält.

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Rattfält, L., Lindén, M., Hult, P. et al. Electrical characteristics of conductive yarns and textile electrodes for medical applications. Med Bio Eng Comput 45, 1251–1257 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-007-0266-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-007-0266-y

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