Conductive rubber electrode for wearable health monitoring

For the continuous health monitoring, physiological signal must be able to measure for a long time in daily life. Therefore, health monitoring device was made as small as possible, and sensors must have a small effect by motion artifact. To reduce impedance between the user skin and the electrode, a conductive gel was applied to the metallic electrode, thereby facilitating converting ion current flowing in a living body into an electric current. However, commercial disposable electrode using the conductive gel incurred a skin trouble such as a reddish skin and stinging pain, when used to measure electrocardiogram (ECG) for a long-time. In this paper, we evaluated the performance of the conductive rubber electrode to use the electrode of wearable health monitoring device. These electrode were made the rubber electrode included a good conductive metal compound and had some viscosity. In addition, conductive yarn was tested to replace connecting wire between electrode and measurement device. The ECG signal measured by the conductive yarn rubber electrode cable was good quality. However, conductive yarn must be isolated to use in garment.