Ordered Nanopillar Arrays of Low Dynamic Noise Dry Bioelectrodes for Electrocardiogram Surface Monitoring

Flexible bioelectric dry electrodes are an important part of long-term medical healthcare monitoring systems. In this study, a new method is proposed for the preparation of dry electrodes with micronanopillar arrays structured by designing dimensionally tunable anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) templates, by which polyaniline/thermoplastic polyurethane single-layer micronanopillar array structured dry electrodes (PANI/TPU-SE) and polyaniline/thermoplastic polyurethane double-layer micronanopillar array structured dry electrodes (PANI/TPU-DE) are prepared. Compared with the planar structure, the micronanopillar array structure can reduce the contact gap between the electrode and skin and increase the contact area, thus exhibiting lower contact impedance and higher signal quality. At 0.1 Hz, the impedances of the wet electrode, PANI/TPU-DE300, PANI/TPU-SE10, and planar structure electrodes are 269.5 kΩ, 375.5 kΩ, 398.1 kΩ, and 2.257 MΩ, respectively, and the impedance value for PANI/TPU-DE300 is smaller than that for PANI/TPU-SE10 and closer to that for the wet electrode. In addition, because the surface of the micronanostructure can conform to the human skin, about 210.7% increase in the peel strength of double-layer structure electrodes compared to flat structure electrodes, it shows a low baseline drift in the dynamic ECG measurement, and the signal-to-noise ratio in the walking state can reach 21.33 ± 5.4775 dB. Therefore, the prepared bioelectric dry electrode has a wide application prospect in the fields of wearable medical monitoring.