Effect of various metal areas with the same shadow area on defibrillation electrode resistance

The objective of this paper is to determine if the electrode resistance for defibrillation electrodes with the same shadow area changes with the exposed metal area. To accomplish this the electrode resistance was compared for identical coil electrodes with and without insulation between the windings (backfill), and for solid cylinders of the same dimensions as the coil electrodes. The results were that removing the backfill reduced the resistance by 2%, compared with an area increase of 400%. Similarly, the resistance for the cylinder was 3% less than the resistance for the backfilled electrode even the though the surface area was 300% larger. Thus increasing the exposed metal area while keeping the same shadow area results in a small but significant decrease in resistance