Effect of Silver Chloride Content on the Performance of Fully Printed Fabric Electrodes for ECG Monitoring

Silver/silver chloride (Ag/AgCl)‐coated electronic textiles (e‐textiles) provide breathable, flexible, and stable substitutes to traditional medical gel electrodes or flexible film‐based electrodes for electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring. In this electrode system, Ag transfers electrons to maintain strong electrical conductivity, while AgCl converts ions to electrons at the skin–electrode interface to ensure good electrochemical properties. Nevertheless, the fabrication techniques and electronical characteristics are the main focus, which ignores the impact of the amount of AgCl on the performances of textile electrodes. In this paper, three different weight percentages of Ag/AgCl textile electrodes were compared here; the weight percentage of Ag/AgCl is 8/2, 7/3, and 6/4, respectively. The surface and cross‐section morphology, elemental content, and electrical/electrochemical properties and the ability of ECG signal acquisition were comprehensively characterized. The results show that all the three textile electrodes fabricated by microelectronic printer exhibited uniform surfaces and outstanding electrical/electrochemical properties, and all of them were able to acquire ECG signals effectively. Furthermore, with the increase of AgCl content, the electrochemical performance of textile electrode is more excellent and the better the quality signal acquisition, especially under dynamic conditions with minimal motion artifacts. By analyzing the acquired signals and metrics such as signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) and mean square deviation of R‐wave peaks, it can be concluded that when the proportion of AgCl for a textile electrodes is 40%, the level of ECG signal acquisition can be comparable to that of medical disposable gel electrodes. This research offers constructive guidance for material selection of wearable electrodes and electrophysiological sensing platforms.