Micro-spike EEG electrode and the vacuum-casting technology for mass production

An innovative dry electroencephalography (EEG) electrode has been successfully designed and tested, in which multiple micro-spike electrodes, each of them consisting of a micro-pillar with a micro-tip on top of it, were designed to pass through the hairs and establish electrical conduction at the skin-electrode interface by penetrate into the stratum corneum of the skin. For hygiene reasons, such electrodes should be made disposable, at the same time, should be cost effective. Therefore, a mass production technology, including the processing methods, such as casting, has to be designed and developed. In this project, the micro-spike dry electrodes were fabricated by a vacuum casting method using a master pattern piece made by CNC micro-machining, in which silicone rubber moulds are created and then used to vacuum cast polyurethane (PU), epoxy or epoxy-carbon micro-spike electrodes. In order to obtain a harder polymeric material, varying amount of carbon fillers were added to the epoxy resin, and the hardness of the resulting material were measured and compared. It was found that a higher concentration of added carbon fillers resulted in a harder cast polymer composite. Further to the vacuum casting, to create an electrically conductive layer on the vacuum-casted electrode, an Ag/AgCl electroless deposition method has been developed. The sputtering of the conductive layer was also carried out for comparison. The developed micro-spike electrodes showed better performance in terms of the impedance level and stability as well as a much higher efficiency in EEG measurement. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.