In this work, we propose a poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) based flexible branched electromyography (EMG) sensor for detecting small-area EMG signal from curved skin. By using semiconductor fabrication process, we fa...
In this work, we propose a poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) based flexible branched electromyography (EMG) sensor for detecting small-area EMG signal from curved skin. By using semiconductor fabrication process, we fabricated a miniaturized 16-channel multielectrode sensor that can record small-area EMG. In general, platinum (Pt) and other metals were used as the electrode material of the EMG sensor. However, by substituting Pt with solution-processible PEDOT:PSS, the sensor arrays could be made cost-effectively while maintaining the impedance of the electrode. We also applied aluminum (Al) hard mask process instead of photoresist (PR) when etching the Parylene C encapsulation layers. This approach also makes the fabrication process simple by reducing the number of photomasks and increasing the process window of polymer dry etching. The sensor was fabricated on flexible and biocompatible Parylene C substrate so that it can detect the surface electromyography(sEMG) from curved skin surface. The recorded EMG signals were analyzed through fast fourier transform(FFT) and power spectral density (PSD) verifying that the flexible branched EMG sensor can record the multi-channel signals in small-area.