A growing population suffering from or at high risk of
developing cardiovascular
diseases can benefit from rapid, precise, and readily available diagnostics.
Textronics is an interdisciplinary approach for designing and manufacturing
high-performance flexible electronics integrated with textiles for
various applications, with electrocardiography (ECG) being the most
convenient and most frequently used diagnostic technique for textronic
solutions. The key challenges that still exist for textronics include
expedient manufacturing, adaptation to human subjects, sustained operational
stability for Holter-type data acquisition, reproducibility, and compatibility
with existing solutions. The present study demonstrates conveniently
paintable ECG electroconductive coatings on T-shirts woven from polyester
or 70% polyamide and 30% polyester. The up to 600-μm-thick coatings
encompass working electrodes of low resistivity 60 Ω sq–1 sheathed in the insulated pathwaysconjugable
with a wireless, multichannel ECG recorder. Long (800 μm) multiwalled
carbon nanotubes, with scalable reproducibility and purity (18 g per
round of synthesis), constituted the electroactive components and
were embedded into a commercially available screen-printing acrylic
base. The resulting paint had a viscosity of 0.75 Pa·s at 56
s–1 and 25 °C and was conveniently applied
using a paintbrush, making this technique accessible to manufacturers.
The amplified and nondigitally processed ECG signals were recorded
under dry-skin conditions using a certified ECG recorder. The system
enabled the collection of ECG signals from two channels, allowing
the acquisition of cardiac electrical activity on six ECG leads with
quality at par with medical diagnostics. Importantly, the Holter-type
ECG allowed ambulatory recording for >24 h under various activities
(sitting, sleeping, walking, and running) in three male participants.
The ECG signal was stable for >5 cycles of washing, a level of
stability
not reported yet previously. The developed ECG-textronic application
possesses acceptable and reproducible characteristics, making this
technology a suitable candidate for further testing in clinical trials.
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