Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy as an objective method for characterization of textile electrodes

Textile electrodes are being developed for monitoring, eg, heart and respiration rate. Textile materials are comfortable and thus enable long-term monitoring. This flexibility, however, leads to many artefacts in the signals. One of the main problems in testing such sensors on a human body is the huge variability of the latter. This paper describes and objective method that enables accurate and reproducible characterization of textile electrodes using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The effect of textile structure, presence of sweat, sensor size and long-term stability are being studied.