A Preliminary Study on Aerosol Jet-Printed Stretchable Dry Electrode for Electromyography

In the last decade, measurement of physiological signals has been attracting great interest for both health-care and Industry 4.0 applications. In this context, the electrodes used during signal acquisition play a key role. In this work, we propose the development of dry electrodes for electromyography (EMG), specifically exploiting the possibility given by aerosol jet printing to realize electrical pads and interconnections on stretchable substrates. We investigated the materials and geometry of the sensors, characterizing their electromechanical properties at rest and under stretching. Finally, a set of prototypal electrodes for EMG were designed, produced and evaluated comparing them with commercial ones. The described approach resulted to be feasible and promising for different applications considering both health monitoring and human-machine interfaces.