Laser-Engraved Liquid Metal Circuit for Wearable Electronics

Liang, Shuting; Li, Fengjiao; Song, Na

doi:10.3390/bioengineering9020059

Cited by 18 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Gallium-based liquid metals (LMs) are metal alloys with a low melting point and high conductivity ( σ = 3.4 × 10 4 S/cm); good fluidity (viscosity ≈2 MPaS); and high deformability ( Zheng et al, 2019 ; Hang et al, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2022 ). At present, LM has shown great utility value in soft robots ( Wang et al, 2018 ; Zheng et al, 2022 ), biomedicine ( Feig et al, 2022 ; Gao et al, 2022 ), energy management ( Zuraiqi et al, 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2021 ), flexible electronics ( Liang et al, 2022 ), etc. Besides, LM is suitable for manufacturing stretchable conductors because it can easily deform with the stretching and bending of flexible substrates ( Wang et al, 2023 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liquid metal integrated PU/CNT fibrous membrane for human health monitoring

Tang

et al. 2023

Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.

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Wearable flexible sensors are widely used in several applications such as physiological monitoring, electronic skin, and telemedicine. Typically, flexible sensors that are made of elastomeric thin-films lack sufficient permeability, which leads to skin inflammation, and more importantly, affects signal detection and consequently, reduces the sensitivity of the sensor. In this study, we designed a flexible nanofibrous membrane with a high air permeability (6.10 mm/s), which could be effectively used to monitor human motion signals and physiological signals. More specifically, a flexible membrane with a point (liquid metal nanoparticles)-line (carbon nanotubes)-plane (liquid metal thin-film) multiscale conductive structure was fabricated by combining liquid metal (LM) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with a polyurethane (PU) nanofibrous membrane. Interestingly, the excellent conductivity and fluidity of the liquid metal enhanced the sensitivity and stability of the membrane. More precisely, the gauge factor (GF) values of the membrane is 3.0 at 50% strain and 14.0 at 400% strain, which corresponds to a high strain sensitivity within the whole range of deformation. Additionally, the proposed membrane has good mechanical properties with an elongation at a break of 490% and a tensile strength of 12 MPa. Furthermore, the flexible membrane exhibits good biocompatibility and can efficiently monitor human health signals, thereby indicating potential for application in the field of wearable electronic devices.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liquid metal integrated PU/CNT fibrous membrane for human health monitoring

Tang

et al. 2023

Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.

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“…[10] In recent years, gallium-based LM has been widely used. Gallium-based LMs are used in wearable devices, [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] sensors, [12,16,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31] microfluidic, [32][33][34][35][36] electromagnetic shielding [37] and other fields. As everyone knows, gallium-based LMs have special properties: LM is liquid at room temperature, LM has good mobility, and more importantly, LM has excellent electrical conductivity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible Microcircuit of a Liquid Metal Deposit Layer

et al. 2023

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Liquid metal (LM) is of great use in many fields (e. g., sensors, biology, electronic circuits). With special mobility, high surface tension and excellent electrical conductivity, it can play a role in the field of flexible electronics. Due to its surface tension, it easily shrinks into a spheroid shape. Especially under the same current condition, the shrinkage of the volume will lead to open circuit, so it is very difficult to produce stable liquid metal ultrathin, ultrafine wire, which has become a barrier limiting the use of liquid metal. In this work, LM is mixed with polydimethylsiloxane to form a micrometer‐thick conductive layer by free deposition. The LM is located inside the polymer holes. Not only that, microcircuits are also mapped on the surface of LM deposits. It not only has excellent electrical conductivity, but also has good flexibility. This work explores a simple method to produce a ultrathin conductive film and reduce the size of electronic components, which has potential applications in integrated circuits.

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“…Regarding the liquid metal-filled microchannel sensor, elastic polymer materials are usually used as flexible substrates for embedded microchannels, making the sensor highly flexible and elastic. So far, the methods for making flexible substrate microchannels include the coaxial melting method to prepare hollow fibers; − flexible substrates for preparing two-dimensional patterned microchannels including using photolithography, − molding, , and the laser engraving method; − 3D printing liquid metal into a polymer solution and then curing the polymer, − etc. Using a laser for direct patterning liquid metal is a fast and convenient method to achieve a liquid metal sensor. − However, due to the limitations of the above manufacturing method, the liquid metal channel is basically a circular or square cross-section. , Some methods have been reported to improve the sensing performance of liquid metal-filled microchannel sensors through structural design.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fully Elastic and High-Sensitivity Liquid Metal Sensor Based on Concave–Convex Structured Microchannel for Human Activity Monitoring and Object Recognition Sensor Array

Liu,

Yin,

Chen

et al. 2023

ACS Appl. Electron. Mater.

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Due to the characteristics of liquid metal such as high conductivity, high fluidity, and good biocompatibility, liquid metal-based sensors have received extensive attention in wearable electronic devices, electronic skin, soft robots, and other fields. However, due to the buffering effect of the high elastic modulus of the flexible substrate, existing liquid metal-based pressure sensors still have shortcomings such as low sensitivity, poor stability, and long response time. This paper shows a method of introducing the concave–convex structure in the linear microchannel through 3D printing to prepare the liquid metal-filled microchannel sensor with high sensitivity, fast response, and high stability. The sensor produced by this method can be applied to human health monitoring, and the expanded sensor array can be applied to object recognition. The concave–convex structure enhances the sensitivity (2.17 kPa–1) of the pressure sensor by increasing the deformation of the microchannel through local pressure concentration, and the sensitivity of the sensor with a concave–convex structures is 10 times higher than that without a concave–convex structure. The sensor also exhibits a short response time of 0.27 s and high stability with no significant resistance changes after less than 10 000 loading–unloading cycles. Finally, the sensor is used for pulse monitoring and human joint motion monitoring as well as for the preparation of a flexible sensor array and its application for item identification.

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Laser-Engraved Liquid Metal Circuit for Wearable Electronics

Cited by 18 publications

References 44 publications

Liquid metal integrated PU/CNT fibrous membrane for human health monitoring

Liquid metal integrated PU/CNT fibrous membrane for human health monitoring

Flexible Microcircuit of a Liquid Metal Deposit Layer

Fully Elastic and High-Sensitivity Liquid Metal Sensor Based on Concave–Convex Structured Microchannel for Human Activity Monitoring and Object Recognition Sensor Array

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