Fig. 3: Enhanced signal quality by utilizing the strain-isolation mechanism on the electrode patch.

A An illustration showing an experimental setup to validate the electrode’s performance with the strain-isolation mechanism using kirigami patterns (Created with BioRender.com released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en)). B A photo of a kirigami-patterned electrode mounted on the masseter muscle area of the rat. Scale bar: 10 mm. C Comparison of measured EMG signals from two types of electrodes (top: with kirigami and bottom: without kirigami) when there is no movement in the masseter region of the rat. Data presented with rectified EMG signal and the root mean square (RMS) envelop of it. D Summarized RMS values that measure baseline noise without a rat’s motion in (C). The results show significant noise reduction by the strain-isolation due to the kirigami structure. E Comparison of measured EMG signals from two types of electrodes (top: with kirigami and bottom: without kirigami) when the rat eats food, generating swallowing motions. F Summarized SNR, demonstrating significantly higher signals from the kirigami electrode than the plain one. Data are presented as mean values with the standard error of the mean.