Controlling the release from silver electrodes by titanium adlayers for health monitoring.

Beside cancer, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of deaths worldwide. For medical diagnosis electrocardiography (ECG) is only a powerful predicting tool if the sensed cardiac cycle involves a high signal to noise ratio and reduced artefacts over a long term. The interface of the electrodes to the biological system is therefore improved with a novel textile system. The textile fiber therein is a 100nm silver-coated yarn to improve the signal quality and the reliability of the ECG signals. Long term diagnosis involves a silver release to the applied tissue surface. It is known, that a high silver release can cause a cytotoxic effect on human cells. To prevent cytotoxicity but still enabling good electrical conductivity accompanied by positive antibacterial properties of silver we developed a nanoscaled TiOx adlayer. The biological and electrical properties of these novel electrode systems are investigated and described in the manuscript. FROM THE CLINICAL EDITOR: The detection of cardiovascular disease using electrocardiography (ECG) usually involves the attachment of electrodes on the skin. In this paper, the authors here described a novel textile system using silver-coated yarn, to provide the interface of the electrodes to the biological system. To prevent sustained high silver release that may lead to cytotoxicity, a nanoscaled TiOx adlayer was developed and added to the novel textile electrode.