Toward the use of temporary tattoo electrodes for impedancemetric respiration monitoring and other electrophysiological recordings

Abstract: Development of dry, ultra-conformable and unperceivable temporary tattoo electrodes (TTEs), based on the ink-jet printing of PEDOT:PSS on top of commercially available temporary tattoo paper, has gained increasing attention as a new and promising technology for electrophysiological recordings on skin. In this work we present a TTEs epidermal sensor for real time monitoring of respiration through transthoracic impedance measurements, exploiting a new design based on the application of soft screen printed Ag ink and magnetic interlink, that guarantees a repositionable, long term stable and robust interconnection of TTEs with external docking devices. The efficiency of the TTE and the proposed interconnection strategy under stretching (up to 10%) and over time (up to 96 hours) has been verified on a dedicated experimental setup and on humans, fulfilling the proposed specific application of transthoracic impedance measurements. The proposed approach makes this technology suitable for large-scale production and suitable not only for the specific use case presented, but also for real time monitoring of different bio-electric signals, as demonstrated through specific proof of concept demonstrators.