Hairy Skin‐adaptive Viscoelastic Dry Electrodes for Long‐term Electrophysiological Monitoring

Long-term epidermal electrophysiological (EP) monitoring is crucial for disease diagnosis and human-machine synergy. The human skin is covered with hair that grow at an average rate of 0.3 mm per day. This impedes a stable contact between the skin and dry epidermal electrodes, resulting in motion artifacts during ultra-long-term EP monitoring. Therefore, accurate and high-quality EP signal detection remains challenging. To address this issue, we report a new solution - the hairy skin-adaptive viscoelastic dry electrode (VDE). This innovative technology is capable of bypassing hair and filling into the skin wrinkles, leading to long-lasting and stable interface impedance. VDE maintained a stable interface impedance for a remarkable period of 48 days and 100 cycles. VDE is highly effective in shielding against hair disturbances in electrocardiography (ECG) monitoring, even during intense chest expansion, and in electromyography (EMG) monitoring during large strain. Furthermore, VDE is easily attachable to the skull without requiring any electroencephalogram (EEG) cap or bandage, making it an ideal solution for EEG monitoring. Our work represents a substantial breakthrough in the field of EP monitoring, providing a solution for the previously challenging issue of monitoring human EP signals on hairy skin. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.