Developing pressure sensitive adhesive electrodes: Preliminary results

A mixture of carbon black powder, polar organo salt and a pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) has shown to be able to collect skin bio potentials. Such PSA electrodes do not dehydrate even after a prolonged period of storage, which leads to a theoretically infinite shelf life. The PSA electrodes need to be electrically activated through electrophoresis. ECG data were simultaneously collected with PSA and Ag-AgCl electrodes from 5 healthy subjects. ECG morphology was almost identical for both media. Hence, given that PSA electrodes have an infinite shelf-life, potentially with less cost associated with their fabrication, and have ECG signal dynamics nearly identical to those of Ag-AgCl, the new electrodes provide an attractive alternative for ECG measurements.