Wearable Cellulosic Textile Electrodes with High Washability Based on Silver Nanowires to Capture Electrocardiogram

The rapid development of wearable electronic raises the requirement of textile electrodes for biosignal acquisition. However, a big concern is the washability of the e-textiles during practical use, especially for the electrocardiogram (ECG) textile electrodes with metal coating on the fabrics. In this study, a conductive cellulosic fabric with high washability was fabricated by simple drop-coating methods. The cellulosic fabric was drop coated with the mixture of silver nanowires (AgNWs) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), and further cross-linked with glutaraldehyde (GA) to form a network to hold AgNWs onto the fabric to prevent AgNWs from falling off in washing. Due to the large amount of hydroxyl groups in the cellulose, it is feasible for GA to cross-link cellulose and PVA by reacting between aldehyde groups and hydroxyl groups. The conductive cellulosic fabric with three drop-coating cycles (3-AgNW/CF) showed excellent conductivity and good stability. The electrical resistance of 3-AgNW/CF increased from 0.43 to 7.63O sq(-1) after 100 washing hours. The conductive cellulosic fabric was applied in the smart garment as textile electrodes to acquire ECG signals, which could remain basically consistent after 80 washing hours and slightly deformed after 100 washing hours. The antibacterial efficiency of the conductive cellulosic fabric was 99.9% mainly owing to impalement of AgNWs into bacteria. Together with the facile fabrication protocol, the cellulosic textile electrodes with superb washability show great potential of consumer-level applications in ECG wearable electronics.

Automated summary

The rapid development of wearable electronics requires textile electrodes with high washability for biosignal acquisition. In this study, a conductive cellulosic fabric was fabricated by drop-coating silver nanowires and polyvinyl alcohol onto the fabric and cross-linking with glutaraldehyde. The fabric showed excellent conductivity and stability, and was used as textile electrodes for ECG signals acquisition.