Al-assisted high frequency self-powered oscillations of liquid metal droplets

Chen, Sen; Yang, Xiaohu; Wang, Hongzhang; Wang, Ronghang; Liu, Jing

doi:10.1039/c9sm01899a

Cited by 22 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…In the field of LM soft machines, the combinations of LM and other metals have brought surprises, including Al-fueled self-driven motion, 149 high-frequency oscillation, 150 and electric field-controlled LM motors. 151 Based on the same doping strategy, LM-particle composites can be applied to disease treatment in the biomedical field.…”

Section: Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liquid Metal Composites

Chen

Wang

Zhao

et al. 2020

Matter

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398

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Liquid metal (LM) with high electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, excellent biocompatibility, and extraordinary fluidity has emerged as a promising class of functional materials. However, such materials still encounter many practical challenges due to the rather limited forms available so far. As a promising remedy, LM composites in synergy with other materials would open tremendous opportunities for fundamental research or practical applications. This is because controllable integration of base LM with functional materials (e.g., metal nanoparticles, polymers, and drug molecules) would significantly tune the intrinsic properties of LM as desired, enabling it to offer further major potential in tackling various sectors' challenging issues, including thermal management, biomedicine, chemical catalysis, flexible electronics, and soft robots. Here, we systematically summarize and review the fundamental progress in pursuing LM composites. The basic composite strategies are outlined in three categories: LM composites with core-shell structure, LM-polymer composites, and LM-particle composites. The effectiveness of the composite strategy is illustrated via the typical applications of LM composites in representative fields. The challenges and perspectives in developing LM composites are also identified and interpreted to better guide future research. It is expected that the coming LM era will witness a new world of fruitful composites thereby discovered or invented.

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Section: Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liquid Metal Composites

Chen

Wang

Zhao

et al. 2020

Matter

Self Cite

398

238

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“…It is an effective method to drive the droplet motor to move at high speed. If the electric field is changed into a magnetic field, the self-powered LM droplet motors will become trapped in the boundary zone of the magnet due to the Lorentz force [106] (Figure 6F). Furthermore, the LM droplets with added Al could realize high frequency self-powered oscillations via redox reaction when placed on an iron plate (Figure 6G) [107].…”

Section: Self-powered Liquid Metal Droplet Motorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responsive Liquid Metal Droplets: From Bulk to Nano

et al. 2022

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Droplets exist widely in nature and play an extremely important role in a broad variety of industrial processes. Typical droplets, including water and oil droplets, have received extensive attention and research, however their single properties still cannot meet diverse needs. Fortunately, liquid metal droplets emerging in recent years possess outstanding properties, including large surface tension, excellent electrical and thermal conductivity, convenient chemical processing, easy transition between liquid and solid phase state, and large-scale deformability, etc. More interestingly, liquid metal droplets with unique features can respond to external factors, including the electronic field, magnetic field, acoustic field, chemical field, temperature, and light, exhibiting extraordinary intelligent response characteristics. Their development over the past decade has brought substantial breakthroughs and progress. To better promote the advancement of this field, the present article is devoted to systematically summarizing and analyzing the recent fundamental progress of responsive liquid metal droplets, not only involving droplet characteristics and preparation methods, but also focusing on their diverse response behaviors and mechanisms. On this basis, the challenges and prospects related to the following development of liquid metal droplets are also proposed. In the future, responsive liquid metal droplets with a rapid development trend are expected to play a key role in soft robots, biomedicine, smart matter, and a variety of other fields.

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“…A series of diverse morphologies and oscillating behaviors on the interface were realized according to metallic activity in the liquid environments. [86][87][88][89] Figure 6A illustrated the self-oscillation that liquid metal droplets partially immerse the liquid metal in an alkaline solution and partially expose it to air. The solution at the interface of liquid metal and air exhibited spontaneous periodic oscillation, which was resulted in the different gradients of surface tension at the three-phase line of air, liquid metal, and solution.…”

Section: Electrochemical Instability Of Liquid Metalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[90] Furthermore, the stability of the air-solution interface can be destroyed through the addition of metal particles (Ni, Al, Fe, Cu) and thus achieve more obvious interfacial jumping ( Figure 6B,C). [88,91,92] The kinetic energy produced by reacting with liquid metal changed the surface tension. Figure 6D displayed the metal wire-oscillation effect driven by liquid metal, which is caused by the continuous inconsistency of the multiphase interface in the system.…”

Section: Electrochemical Instability Of Liquid Metalmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Interfacial Engineering of Room Temperature Liquid Metals

Liu

Cui

et al. 2021

Adv Materials Inter

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and formed spontaneously and instantaneously upon exposure to atmospheric oxygen. [1-3] The thin film or "protective skin" covering the surface of RTLMs, generally dominated the physical properties and applications of the materials. This thin film is composed of a majority fraction of gallium oxides with a much smaller amount of indium and tin oxides. [4] When immersed in acidic or alkaline electrolytes, the oxidic films of RTLMs will be dissolved. [5-8] Due to the disorder of internal structure, the surface of the spherical liquid metal droplet is smooth and removable under the function of surface tension. [9,10] According to the size and structure of the solid substrate, the contact areas between the liquid metal and the solid substrate shows various wetting phenomena and corresponding application scenarios. [11-14] Surface chemical composition plays the primary role in dominating various phenomena and practical applications of RTLMs, which possessed the technologically important and scientifically interesting parameter. Gallium-based liquid metal is similar in structure to conventional solid metal, except for some covalent bonds inside, and the physicochemical properties have the commonality of both metallic solid and fluid properties. [15] The composition of gallium-based alloys can be assumed as made up of several atomic groups, within which the permutation of the solid remains, the binding energy between the liquid atoms remains strong, but the binding force between the groups was broken. The interface refers to the contact area between the different phases, which is the transition layer from one phase to another. The binding force of electrons that are relatively far away from the inner core is related to their energy, causing the interface behavior between different phases to be incompletely consistent. The surface is a type of interface, which specifically refers to the gas phase substance in interfacial behavior. In the processes of thermodynamics, [16,17] surface absorption, [18,19] controllable wetting, [6,13,20] material catalysis, [21,22] redox, and other physical and chemical reactions, [23,24] RTLMs inevitably contact with other substances with different phase states. Even the pure liquid metal would contact with oxygen in the air to yield a thin protective film. [17,25,26] Therefore, the investigation of interfacial behaviors between RTLMs and different surrounding mediums is helpful to renovate and broaden the understanding and applications of liquid metal. So far, there gradually appeared literature on phenomena and mechanism of the interfacial effect of RTLMs, such as synthesis of low-dimensional materials in the gas atmosphere, [27,28] Room temperature liquid metals (RTLMs), especially those made of galliumbased alloys belong to an emerging versatile material with fascinating characteristics derived from its simultaneous metallic and inherent fluidic natures. The interfacial effects of liquid metal involved in diverse surfaces thus play critical roles in explaining many fundamental phenomena....

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Al-assisted high frequency self-powered oscillations of liquid metal droplets

Abstract: It is of great scientific and practical significance to explore and imitate the rhythmic oscillating behaviors.

Cited by 22 publications

References 31 publications

Liquid Metal Composites

Liquid Metal Composites

Responsive Liquid Metal Droplets: From Bulk to Nano

Interfacial Engineering of Room Temperature Liquid Metals

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