A Novel Strategy for Preparing Stretchable and Reliable Biphasic Liquid Metal

Abstract

Low-melting liquid metal is a hugely promising material for flexible conductive patterns due to its excellent conductivity and supercompliance, especially low-cost and environmental liquid processing technology. However, the ever-present fluidity characteristic greatly limits the stable shape and reliability of prepared liquid metal conductive electronics. Herein, a novel solidification strategy of liquid GaIn alloys by Ni doping and heat treatment is first reported, which can efficiently create a solid phase in the liquid metal and provide an effective solution for practical applications. Particularly, the liquid characteristic is preserved for conveniently fabricating different flexible electronic circuits, and then the solidification is carried out on prepared conductive patterns by heat treatment. The solidification mechanism is revealed by the interface chemical reaction between Ni and GaIn, creating the solid phase of intermetallic compound (Ga 4 Ni 3 and InNi 3 ) during heat treatment. Moreover, a biphasic GaInNi can be obtained by regulating the atomic ratio of gallium, indium, and nickel. As a result, the obtained GaInNi possesses extremely low sheet resistance (15 ± 4.5 to 135 ± 2.5 mΩ sq −1 ) and the variation of ΔR/R 0 exhibits low level (0-2) when strained up to 100%, which offers a promising strategy to prepare stretchable and reliable liquid metal electronics.

Controllable and Facile Metallization of Polymer Surface with Biphasic Liquid Metals toward Soft Circuits

“…More importantly, all the instruments (DC power, photo film, and glassware) in this work had a cost as low as only $58. The total expense for the experimental setup and materials of the soft circuits (9.5 $•dm −2 ) in this work was extremely lower than those of other techniques for soft circuits (Table S2) 17,18,46,47,62,63,65,66 the material cost of the template coating was lower than that of this work, Ga would damage the integrity of Cu circuits during the coating process due to the infiltration effect (Figure S37). Additionally, the coating thickness in the coating method 35−38 was uncontrollable and the coating was uneven (Figure S37).…”

“…All references were named after conductive fillers in stretchable conductors. According to the physical properties of conductive fillers, they could be divided into two types: flexible fillers/liquid metal (including bGaIn, 18 EGaIn, 46 Ni-GaIn, 47 EGaIn-Ag, 62 EGaIn-Au, 63 EGaInPs-Ag, 64 Ga−Au, 65 GaInSn-Cu) 66 and rigid fillers (including Ag, 17 Ag flakes, 60 CNT, 61 PEDOT:PSS, 67 Zn-MO 2 , 68 Ag-CNT). 0.058; Q, 3.49) was the most suitable ligand for electrodepositing gallium solution among the four ligands.…”

Flexible, anti-damage, and non-contact sensing electronic skin implanted with MWCNT to block public pathogens contact infection

“…It's a challenge to fabricate flexible sensing modules on polymer interfaces since mostly conductive materials have poor combine ability with macromolecule substrate [29]. Different from others expensive and energy intensive researches [41], we found that the PVA interfaces would be able to effectively composite with MWCNT by a snipped fountain pen, as shown in Figs.…”

Liquid Metal-Based Magnetorheological Fluid with a Large Magnetocaloric Effect

“…This result indicates that the iron does not alloy with galinstan and only exists in Mn 0.6 Fe 0.4 NiGe 0.54 Si 0.46 . In Figure S6c, the peaks of Ni 2p centered at 852.6 and 869.7 eV, which exist a large deviation with 874.7 eV in Ga 4 Ni 3 . However, Ni 2p in the pure magnetic sheet contains three peaks at 852.7, 856, and 869.9 eV, wherein the peak at 856 eV is ascribed to NiO (Figure S6d).…”