Liquid metal droplets with high elasticity, mobility and mechanical robustness

Chen, Yuzhen; Liu, Zhou; Zhu, Deyong; Handschuh‐Wang, Stephan; Liang, Suqing; Yang, Jinbin; Kong, Tiantian; Zhou, Xiaohu; Liu, Yizhen; Zhou, Xuechang

doi:10.1039/c7mh00065k

Cited by 102 publications

(119 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…However, the presence of the oxide skin lowers the surface tension. Furthermore, the wettability of liquid metals on substrates is improved due to the oxide skin, while the oxide skin adheres to different substrates, which is often disadvantageous, for example for highly elastic liquid metal marbles . In order to prevent oxidation of liquid metal, the oxygen concentration can be reduced to one part per million, which is obviously impractical for most applications .…”

Section: Liquid Metal: Category and Naturementioning

confidence: 99%

Liquid Metal–Based Soft Microfluidics

Zhu

Wang

Handschuh‐Wang

et al. 2019

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Motivated by the increasing demand of wearable and soft electronics, liquid metal (LM)‐based microfluidics has been subjected to tremendous development in the past decade, especially in electronics, robotics, and related fields, due to the unique advantages of LMs that combines the conductivity and deformability all‐in‐one. LMs can be integrated as the core component into microfluidic systems in the form of either droplets/marbles or composites embedded by polymer materials with isotropic and anisotropic distribution. The LM microfluidic systems are found to have broad applications in deformable antennas, soft diodes, biomedical sensing chips, transient circuits, mechanically adaptive materials, etc. Herein, the recent progress in the development of LM‐based microfluidics and their potential applications are summarized. The current challenges toward industrial applications and future research orientation of this field are also summarized and discussed.

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Section: Liquid Metal: Category and Naturementioning

confidence: 99%

Liquid Metal–Based Soft Microfluidics

Zhu

Wang

Handschuh‐Wang

et al. 2019

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“…[23] There are two methods to embed the liquid metal droplets with non-metal particles due to the strong cohesive forces between them. [24] To maintain a high surface tension, Chen et al pretreated the liquid metal droplets with the NaOH aqueous solution for about 3 s before rolling the liquid metal droplets on the powder bed, then fabricated the NaOH-treated GaInSn alloy droplets coated with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) particles [25] Figure 3. a) Schematic illustration of the preparation route for liquid metal nanodroplets. With the two different methods, Sivan et al created some liquid metal marbles by coating small Galinstan droplets within a coating of insulators (including Teflon and silica) and semiconductors (including WO 3 , TiO 2 , MoO 3 , In 2 O 3 , and carbon nanotubes) respectively, and it was found that the coating formed through the submerging approach was more uniform.…”

Section: Coating Surfacementioning

confidence: 99%

“…[35] For water, it is effortless to mix nanomaterials into the fluid. [25] Copyright 2017, Royal Society of Chemistry, (b) silica particles, Reproduced with permission. a) Schematic for rolling a liquid metal droplet on the powder bed.…”

Section: Coating Surfacementioning

confidence: 99%

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Preparations, Characteristics and Applications of the Functional Liquid Metal Materials

2017

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As new generation functional materials, the recently emerging low-melting liquid metals have displayed many unconventional properties superior to traditional materials. Various methods, such as alloying, oxidizing, adding metals, or non-metallic materials and so on, have been developed to prepare desirable functional materials based on the gallium or more other metals. These methods could not only change the form of the materials, but also endow the original liquid metals with rather diversified performances, which have further expanded the application range of the low-melting liquid metals to meet various needs. This article aims to review and summarize on the fabrication methods, characteristics, and applications of the functional liquid metal materials. Furthermore, the future outlook in this field, including challenges, routes, and related efforts, has also been illustrated and interpreted.

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“…Shape‐morphing materials, for example, shape memory polymers, hydrogels, and room‐temperature liquid metals (LMs), which are capable of undergoing highly defined morphological transformation in response to various stimuli, possess a variety of applications including autonomous robotics, drug delivery systems, biomedical devices, and tissue engineering . LMs are one of the promising shape‐morphing materials because they can flow and deform under a very tiny force while possessing high thermal and electric conductivity.…”

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confidence: 99%

Light‐Induced Shape Morphing of Liquid Metal Nanodroplets Enabled by Polydopamine Coating

Gan

Shang

Handschuh‐Wang

et al. 2019

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Shape morphing nanosystems have recently attracted much attention and a number of applications are developed, spanning from autonomous robotics to drug delivery. However, the fabrication of such nanosystems remains at an early stage owing to limited choices of strategies and materials. This work reports a facile method to fabricate liquid metal (LM) nanodroplets by sonication of bulk LM in an aqueous dopamine hydrochloride solution and their application in light‐induced shape morphing at the nanoscale. In this method, dopamine acts as a surfactant, which stabilizes the LM nanodroplets dispersion during the sonication, and results in downsizing of the nanodroplets. Furthermore, by adding 2‐amino‐2‐(hydroxymethyl)‐1,3‐propanediol to the suspension, self‐polymerization of dopamine molecules occurs, resulting in the formation of polydopamine (PDA)‐coated LM nanodroplets. Owing to the high photothermal conversion of the PDA, PDA‐coated LM nanodroplets are transformed from spherical shapes to ellipsoids by NIR laser irradiation. This study paves a simple and reliable pathway for the preparation of functional LM nanodroplets and their application as shape‐morphing nanosystems.

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Liquid metal droplets with high elasticity, mobility and mechanical robustness

Abstract: Non-stick, ultra-elastic liquid metal droplets were fabricated by coating PTFE particles onto the surface of NaOH-treated liquid metal droplets.

Cited by 102 publications

References 60 publications

Liquid Metal–Based Soft Microfluidics

Liquid Metal–Based Soft Microfluidics

Preparations, Characteristics and Applications of the Functional Liquid Metal Materials

Light‐Induced Shape Morphing of Liquid Metal Nanodroplets Enabled by Polydopamine Coating

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