Understanding and mitigating triboelectric artifacts in wearable electronics

Electrophysiological measurement is a well-accepted tool and standard for health monitoring and well-being management. A great number of electrophysiological measurement devices have been developed including clinical equipment, research products, and consumer electronics. However, until now, it is still challenging to secure long-term stable and accurate signal acquisition, especially in wearable condition, not only for medical application in hospital settings, but also for daily well-being management. Motion-induced artifacts widely exist in electrophysiological recording regardless of electrodes (wet, dry, or noncontact). These artifacts are one of the major impediments against the acceptance of wearable devices and capacitive electrodes in clinical diagnosis. During motion, the electrophysiological signal acquisition is easily fluctuating and even out of range to the power rails. Other than skin-electrode impedance instability, is there a second dominant factor contributing to motion artifacts?

The goal of this project is to understand the fundamental physical model of motion artifacts in wearable devices from a new perspective and provide synergistic solutions to mitigating the artifacts by leveraging tribomaterial-based sensor design for charge manipulation and statistical data analytics for artifact removal. This project is funded by National Science Foundation.