Evaluating the Dielectric Performance of Unblended PDMS Films for Non-contact ECG Sensing Applications
Keywords:
Biocompatible polymer, Dielectrics, Non-contact ECG, Bioelectrodes, Unblended PDMS films.Abstract
Non-contact electrocardiogram (ECG) bioelectrodes need biocompatible dielectrics that can record cardiac signals for the long-term without skin irritation. Existing biomedical dielectrics used in non-contact ECG bioelectrodes exhibit rigidity, require expensive experiments, and induce noise interference during recording. This study explores unblended polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) films as alternative biocompatible dielectrics for non-contact bioelectrodes. Unblended PDMS films were characterized using a simple deposition technique by increasing the proportion of the PDMS cross-linker while the polymer elastomer was kept constant. Next, energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) was performed to determine the elemental components for each PDMS film sample as well as their dielectric constants. The dielectric performance of PDMS film with the highest dielectric constant alongside fabric dielectrics and wet bioelectrodes were experimented in recording ECG signals. The EDX analysis revealed different compositions, by percentage of carbon, silicon, and oxygen, which varied with the increase in proportion of the cross-linker. Moreover, ECG measurements confirmed that the unblended PDMS dielectric film with the highest cross-linker ratio (10:2) performed sufficiently comparable with other bioelectrodes experimented with, demonstrating their potential as a cost-effective and biocompatible solution for non-contact bioelectrodes in long-term ECG monitoringDownloads
References
[1] Savarese, G., & Lund, L. H. (2017). Global public health burden of heart failure. Cardiac Failure Review, 3(1), 7–7. https://doi.org/10.15420/cfr.2016:25:2
.
[2] World Health Organization. (n.d.). Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cardiovascular-diseases-(cvds)
.
[3] Martirosyan, M., et al. (2017). Remote monitoring of heart failure: Benefits for therapeutic decision making. Expert Review of Cardiovascular Therapy, 15(7), 503–515. https://doi.org/10.1080/14779072.2017.1348229
.
[4] Karunathilake, S. P., & Ganegoda, G. U. (2018). Secondary prevention of cardiovascular diseases and application of technology for early diagnosis. BioMed Research International, 2018, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/5767864
.
[5] Fye, W. B. (1994). A history of the origin, evolution, and impact of electrocardiography. The American Journal of Cardiology, 73(13), 937–949.
[6] Searle, A., & Kirkup, L. (2000). A direct comparison of wet, dry and insulating bioelectric recording electrodes. Physiological Measurement, 21(2), 271–283. https://doi.org/10.1088/0967-3334/21/2/307
.
[7] Janz, G. J., & Ives, D. J. G. (1968). Silver, silver chloride electrodes. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 148(1), 210–221. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1968.tb20350.x
.
[8] Melgarejo-Meseguer, F.-M., et al. (2018). On the beat detection performance in long-term ECG monitoring scenarios. Sensors, 18(5), 1387. Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/5/1387
.
[9] Lobodzinski, S. S., & Laks, M. M. (2012). New devices for very long-term ECG monitoring. Cardiology Journal, 19(2), 210–214.
[10] Li, P., et al. (2017). High-performance personalized heartbeat classification model for long-term ECG signal. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 64(1), 78–86. https://doi.org/10.1109/TBME.2016.2539421
.
[11] Fergus, P., et al. (2012). Home-based health monitoring and measurement for personalised healthcare. Journal of Medical Imaging and Health Informatics, 2(1), 35–43. https://doi.org/10.1166/jmihi.2012.1059
.
[12] FDA. (2020). Classification of products as drugs and devices and additional product classification issues—Guidance for industry and FDA staff. Available at: https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/classification-products-drugs-and-devices-and-additional-product-classification-issues
.
[13] O’Brien, W. J. (2002). Dental materials and their selection.
[14] Ernest, N. K., & Dario, F. (2014). Peripheral nerves and muscles. In J. G. Webster (Ed.), The physiological measurement handbook (pp. 214–235). CRC Press.
[15] Yazicioglu, R. F., Van Hoof, C., & Puers, R. (2008). Biopotential readout circuits for portable acquisition systems. Springer.
[16] Richardson, P. C., Coombs, F. K., & Adams, R. (1968). Some new electrode techniques for long-term physiologic monitoring. Aerospace Medicine, 39(7), 745.
[17] Lopez, A., & Richardson, P. C. (1969). Capacitive electrocardiographic and bioelectric electrodes. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, (1), 99–99.
[18] Potter, A., & Menke, L. (1970). Capacitive type of biomedical electrode. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, (4), 350–351.
[19] Jiao, Y. (2019). Measurement techniques of electrical properties for food quality evaluation. In J. Zhong & X. Wang (Eds.), Evaluation Technologies for Food Quality (pp. 595–616). Woodhead Publishing.
[20] Al Hadeethi, S., et al. (2018). Low-frequency electrical impedance meat measurements. Proceedings of the Romanian Academy. Series B, 20(3), 173–178.
[21] Richardson, P. (1967). The insulated electrode: A pasteless electrocardiographic technique. In 20th Annual Conference on Engineering in Medicine and Biology (Vol. 9, p. 15.7).
[22] David, R. M., & Portnoy, W. (1972). Insulated electrocardiogram electrodes. Medical and Biological Engineering, 10, 742–751.
[23] Therese, G. H. A., & Kamath, P. V. (2000). Electrochemical synthesis of metal oxides and hydroxides. Chemistry of Materials, 12(5), 1195–1204. https://doi.org/10.1021/cm990447a
.
[24] Davidse, P. D., & Maissel, L. I. (1966). Dielectric thin films through RF sputtering. Journal of Applied Physics, 37(2), 574–579. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1708218
.
[25] Spinelli, E., & Haberman, M. (2010). Insulating electrodes: A review on biopotential front ends for dielectric skin–electrode interfaces. Physiological Measurement, 31(10), S183–S198. https://doi.org/10.1088/0967-3334/31/10/s03
.
[26] Pliskin, W. A. (1977). Comparison of properties of dielectric films deposited by various methods. Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology, 14(5), 1064–1081. https://doi.org/10.1116/1.569413
.
[27] Ng, C. L., & Reaz, M. B. I. (2017). Characterization of textile-insulated capacitive biosensors. Sensors, 17(3), 574.
[28] Pantelopoulos, A., & Bourbakis, N. G. (2009). A survey on wearable sensor-based systems for health monitoring and prognosis. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 40(1), 1–12.
[29] Kabir, S. F., et al. (2018). Cellulose-based hydrogel materials: Chemistry, properties and their prospective applications. Progress in Biomaterials, 7(3), 153–174.
[30] Maier, G. (2001). Low dielectric constant polymers for microelectronics. Progress in Polymer Science, 26(1), 3–65.
[31] Guo, B., Glavas, L., & Albertsson, A.-C. (2013). Biodegradable and electrically conducting polymers for biomedical applications. Progress in Polymer Science, 38(9), 1263–1286.
[32] Liu, Y., Pharr, M., & Salvatore, G. A. (2017). Lab-on-skin: A review of flexible and stretchable electronics for wearable health monitoring. ACS Nano, 11(10), 9614–9635.
[33] Zhao, X. Y., & Liu, H. J. (2010). Review of polymer materials with low dielectric constant. Polymer International, 59(5), 597–606.
[34] He, X., et al. (2016). Flexible and transparent triboelectric nanogenerator based on high performance porous PDMS dielectric film. Nano Research, 9(12), 3714–3724.
[35] Fan, B., et al. (2018). Achieving PDMS/CNT composites with extremely low dielectric loss and adjustable dielectric constant by sandwich structure. Applied Physics Letters, 112(5), 052902.
[36] Nawanil, C., et al. (2019). Electrical and dielectric properties of barium titanate–PDMS nanocomposite modified with CNT. Integrated Ferroelectrics, 195(1), 46–57.
[37] Basu, M., et al. (2021). Development of graphene oxide–PDMS composite dielectric for microfluidic applications. Chemical Engineering Science, 230, 116175.
[38] Liu, Y., et al. (2020). Flexible capacitive 3D tactile sensor with composite dielectric. IEEE Sensors Journal, 21(2), 1378–1385.
[39] Zambri, I. M., et al. (2020). Fabrication and characterization of multi-walled carbon nanotube conductive polymer composite. In AIP Conference Proceedings (Vol. 2306).
[40] Umar, A. H., Harun, F. K. C., & Yusof, Y. (2020). Characterization of PDMS dielectric films for capacitive ECG bioelectrodes. In 7th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computer Sciences and Informatics (EECSI) (pp. 127–131).
[41] Parvez, A. N., et al. (2019). Optimization of triboelectric energy harvesting from water droplets on PDMS-reduced graphene oxide surface. Composites Part B: Engineering, 174, 106923.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
