Hunan Key Laboratory of Biomedical Nanomaterials and Devices, College of Life Sciences and Chemistry, Hunan University of Technology, Zhuzhou 412007, People's Republic of China. Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.
J Neural Eng. 2020 Mar 4;17(2):026001. doi: 10.1088/1741-2552/ab71ea.
With the rapid development of EEG-based wearable healthcare devices and brain-computer interfaces, reliable and user-friendly EEG sensors for EEG recording, especially at forehead sites, are highly desirable and challenging. However, existing EEG sensors cannot meet the requirements, since wet electrodes require tedious setup and conductive pastes or gels, and most dry electrodes show unacceptable high contact impedance. In addition, the existing electrodes cannot absorb sweat effectively; sweat would cause cross-interferences, and even short circuits, between adjacent electrodes, especially in the moving scenarios, or a hot and humid environment. To resolve these problems, a novel printable flexible Ag/AgCl dry electrode array was developed for EEG acquisition at forehead sites, mainly consisting of screen printing the Ag/AgCl coating, conductive sweat-absorbable sponges and flexible tines.
A systematic method was also established to evaluate the flexible dry electrode array.
The experimental results show the flexible dry electrode array has reproducible electrode potential, relatively low electrode-skin impedance, and good stability. Moreover, the EEG signals can be effectively captured with a high quality that is comparable to that of wet electrodes.
All the results confirmed the feasibility of forehead EEG recording in real-world scenarios using the proposed flexible dry electrode array, with a rapid and facile operation as well as the advantages of self-application, user-friendliness and wearer comfort.
随着基于脑电图的可穿戴医疗设备和脑机接口的快速发展，对于脑电图记录，特别是在前额部位，可靠且用户友好的脑电图传感器是非常需要的，也是极具挑战性的。然而，现有的脑电图传感器无法满足这些要求，因为湿电极需要繁琐的设置以及导电膏或凝胶，而大多数干电极的接触阻抗高得无法接受。此外，现有的电极不能有效地吸收汗液；汗液会导致相邻电极之间产生交叉干扰，甚至短路，尤其是在运动场景或炎热潮湿的环境中。为了解决这些问题，我们开发了一种新型的可打印的柔性 Ag/AgCl 干电极阵列，用于前额部位的脑电图采集，主要由丝网印刷 Ag/AgCl 涂层、导电吸湿海绵和柔性叉齿组成。
我们还建立了一种系统的方法来评估柔性干电极阵列。
实验结果表明，柔性干电极阵列具有可重复的电极电位、相对较低的电极-皮肤阻抗和良好的稳定性。此外，该电极阵列能够有效地捕获高质量的脑电图信号，其质量可与湿电极相媲美。
所有结果都证实了使用所提出的柔性干电极阵列在前额进行脑电图记录的可行性，该电极阵列具有快速、简便的操作以及自应用、用户友好和佩戴舒适的优势。
