Textile-based electrodes for long-term electrocardiogram monitoring

Heart diseases, encompassing a wide array of conditions that affect the heart’s structure and function, stand as a formidable global health challenge. Diagnosing heart disorders involves a comprehensive approach, drawing upon a range of methods and technologies, for example, an Electrocardiogram (ECG) monitors the heart’s electrical signals facilitating the diagnosis of irregular rhythms or structural abnormalities. One of the most essential components of ECG is the electrodes, which are strategically placed on the skin to detect and record the heart’s electrical impulses. The present work reports the fabrication of textile-based ECG electrodes, where the cotton-based fabric has been used as a substrate and coated with a novel ink comprising a conducting polymer engineered with a natural extract from Aloe barbadensis miller (ABM) leaves. ABM extract incorporated here serves two purposes—(1) acts as an efficient binder to improve the adhesion between the substrate and ink (2) improves the skin–electrode impedance because of its inherent ionic character. All the materials employed in the fabrication are skin-compatible, easy to fabricate as well as inexpensive. The electrodes thus fabricated have been tested for their skin-impedance values, where the impedance values < 10 KΩ confirm the suitability for ECG measurements. Moreover, the electrodes have been successfully demonstrated to be employed for ECG monitoring.