Commercial Metallized Textiles for Dry EEG Electrodes: Structure, Textile-Level Durability, and Controlled Frontal Validation Against Ag/AgCl

Commercially available metallized textiles offer a scalable material platform for dry EEG electrodes, but their performance depends on the fabric architecture, coating distribution, and durability of the textile component. This work evaluated three industrial conductive textiles—a weft-knit silver-plated PA6/elastane, a warp-knit PA6/elastomer with one-sided conductive silicone, and a woven PA66 with Ag/Cu/Sn metallization—using a standardized, textile-centered protocol combining textile-level washing durability (UNE-EN IEC 63203-204-1:2023), artificial perspiration exposure (UNE-EN ISO 105-E04:2013), impedance characterization on a skin-mimicking phantom with reduced equivalent-circuit analysis, and human EEG recordings (n = 9) against a simultaneously recorded Ag/AgCl comparison electrode at Fp1 under controlled resting conditions. The fabric structure and tested surface orientation influenced resistance and textile-level laundering durability, with the woven Ag/Cu/Sn fabric showing the greatest resistance stability across 20 laundering cycles, illustrating a trade-off between conformability and electrical stability. Agreement was quantified using repeated-measures Bland–Altman limits, Lin’s concordance correlation coefficient (CCC), and equivalence testing. The four textile configurations evaluated in the full EEG cohort showed high temporal waveform agreement with the Ag/AgCl comparison signal (grand-mean r = 0.92) and a small system-level RMS bias (−7%; CCC = 0.96), with spectral coherence highest in the alpha and lower-frequency bands. No configuration effect was detected for the main agreement metrics within this sample. These findings support commercial metallized textiles as promising dry EEG electrode candidates for further development toward scalable wearable systems.