Liquid metal biomaterials: a newly emerging area to tackle modern biomedical challenges

Abstract

Conventional biomaterials, such as metals, polymers, composites and ceramics, may not work well when facing certain tough medical challenges. As an alternative, body-temperature liquid metals, such as gallium, or its alloys are recently emerging as new generation functional materials which display many unconventional properties superior to traditional biomaterials, i.e. high fluidity, excellent electrical and thermal conductivities, good biocompatibility, sufficient radiopacity, controllable behaviour, easy manufacture and low cost. This article aims to outline a new biomedical category: liquid metal biomaterials. Representative applications enabled by liquid metal biomaterials from both therapeutic and diagnostic aspects were reviewed. Furthermore, related efforts and perspective for future development of employing liquid metals to resolve modern biomedical tough issues were discussed. With continuous technical progresses and fundamental discoveries, liquid metals are expected to offer more and more outstanding merits as a new class of biomaterials which are promising a generalised way towards resolving biomedical challenges.

On the Wetting States of Low Melting Point Metal Galinstan® on Silicon Microstructured Surfaces

“…Research has been performed on the potential for LMP metals in heat transfer applications, electronic components, and biological and medical sciences, among other applications. For heat transfer in specific, little research has been done on how the wetting properties are related.…”

NIR laser-responsive liquid metal-loaded polymeric hydrogels for controlled release of doxorubicin

“…16 LM is a special family of materials that have both metallic and uidic properties simultaneously. 17,18 Typical materials in the area such as gallium, gallium-indium eutectic alloys (EGaIn) and galliumindium-tin alloys (Galinstan), which have low melting points, have been widely used as printed circuits, so electronics, and other biomaterials. [19][20][21][22][23][24] EGaIn preserves the essential characteristics of LMs, such as excellent combination of thermalconductivity and transformability, while presenting better biocompatibility.…”

Liquid-Metal Enabled Droplet Circuits

“…Liquid metal refers to alloys or metals with a low melting point, which can maintain their liquid phase around room temperature [ 15 ]. The electrical properties and biocompatibility of liquid metal have been proven in Yi et al’s work [ 15 ]. In contrast to mercury, which is highly toxic, liquid metal based on gallium is relatively safe for medical applications.…”