Paintable Carbon Nanotube Coating-Based Textronics for Sustained Holter-Type Electrocardiography.

Area of Science:

• Materials Science and Engineering
• Biomedical Engineering
• Textile Electronics

Background:

• Cardiovascular diseases necessitate advanced, accessible diagnostic tools.
• Textronics, integrating electronics with textiles, offers potential for wearable diagnostics.
• Existing textronic solutions face challenges in manufacturing, stability, and reproducibility for electrocardiography (ECG).

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a paintable, electroconductive coating for textile-based ECG monitoring.
• To assess the performance, stability, and reproducibility of the developed ECG-textronic system.
• To enable convenient, long-term ambulatory ECG monitoring for cardiovascular assessment.

Main Methods:

• Developed a paintable coating using multiwalled carbon nanotubes embedded in an acrylic base.
• Applied the coating onto polyester and polyamide/polyester T-shirts to create working electrodes.
• Recorded ECG signals under dry-skin conditions using a wireless, multichannel recorder and evaluated signal quality and stability over 24 hours and after washing.

Main Results:

• Achieved low-resistivity (60 Ω sq^-1) electroconductive coatings on textiles.
• Recorded high-quality, two-channel ECG signals comparable to medical diagnostics.
• Demonstrated stable, >24-hour ambulatory ECG monitoring during various activities and >5 wash cycles.

Conclusions:

• The paintable ECG-textronic system offers a reproducible and stable solution for wearable cardiovascular monitoring.
• This technology demonstrates significant potential for clinical applications and further development.
• The developed method is accessible for manufacturers, paving the way for widespread adoption.