Surface effects of liquid metal amoeba

Hu, Liang; Li, Jing; Tang, Jianbo; Liu, Jing

doi:10.1016/j.scib.2017.04.015

Cited by 29 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Since the completion of this previous project we continuously work on the examination of other possible LM transformations on substrate materials. The additional findings 42 further strengthen the claim that the surface charge of the specific substrate material in NaOH solution and the well contact between droplet and substrate are two most important factors in inducing the LM amoeba behavior.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 72%

Liquid metal amoeba with spontaneous pseudopodia formation and motion capability

Yuan

Liu

2017

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The unique motion of amoeba with a deformable body has long been an intriguing issue in scientific fields ranging from physics, bionics to mechanics. So far, most of the currently available artificial machines are still hard to achieve the complicated amoeba-like behaviors including stretching pseudopodia. Here through introducing a multi-materials system, we discovered a group of very unusual biomimetic amoeba-like behaviors of self-fueled liquid gallium alloy on the graphite surface immersed in alkaline solution. The underlying mechanisms were discovered to be the surface tension variations across the liquid metal droplet through its simultaneous electrochemical interactions with aluminum and graphite in the NaOH electrolyte. This finding would shed light on the packing and the structural design of future soft robots owning diverse deformation capability. Moreover, this study related the physical transformation of a non-living LM droplet to the life behavior of amoeba in nature, which is inspiring in human’s pursuit of advanced biomimetic machine.

show abstract

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 72%

Liquid metal amoeba with spontaneous pseudopodia formation and motion capability

Yuan

Liu

2017

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…[21,[89][90][91][92][93] Beyond these, there are several other methods to manipulate the shape and position of liquid metals. In addition to the surface oxidation described in this progress report, liquid metal can be controlled by mechanochemistry, [64,94] pressure, [95] ionic gradient, [96] ultrasound field, [97] electric field, [98][99][100][101] magnetic field, [102][103][104][105] and electrochemistry. [15,64,88,89,[106][107][108][109][110][111] Figure 9 shows a variety of liquid metal applications, using a variety of methods to control the shape and the movements: this is a rich framework in which to develop new devices and techniques.…”

Section: Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unlike other morphological transitions, this transition occurs at potentials that depend drop size (in the case of sessile drops) and flow rate (in the case of fluid streams). We have previously reasoned that these dependencies arise from the choice of NaOH as the solution [14], [15], [62], [65], because NaOH serves as an electrolyte that can dissolve oxide species as they are created. The dissolution of gallium oxide proceeds through the reaction,…”

Section: Morphological Behaviors At Higher Potentialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interfacial Tension Modulation of Liquid Metal via Electrochemical Oxidation

Song

Daniels

Kiani

et al. 2021

Advanced Intelligent Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Among all of the elements in the periodic table, there are only five metals that are liquid near room temperature: francium (Fr), cesium (Cs), rubidium (Rb), mercury (Hg), and gallium (Ga).The first three elements, however, are not practical for applications because they are either radioactive (Fr, Cs) or explosively reactive with air (Rb). Mercury was widely used in the past but is now avoided due to its toxicity. [1,2] By process of elimination, therefore, gallium and gallium-based alloys are the safest liquid metals at or near room temperature. [3] Gallium, discovered in 1875, has an extremely low vapor pressure even at high temperatures (effectively zero at room temperature and only 1 kPa at 1037 C; [4] by comparison, water has a vapor pressure of 1 kPa at 7 C). This low vapor pressure keeps the liquid from evaporating and eliminates the danger of vapor inhalation. While gallium should be found as solid at room temperature, because its melting point is 30 C, it is often liquid due to its ability to supercool. To assure a roomtemperature liquid phase, eutectic alloys containing at least one additional metal are commonly used to lower the melting point below room temperature. Two popular commercial alloys are Galinstan (68.5 wt% Ga, 21.5 wt% In, and 10.0 wt% Sn) and eutectic gallium indium (EGaIn, 75.5 wt% Ga and 24.5 wt% In), for which the melting point is 10.7 and 15.5 C, respectively. [5] In air, these alloys all form surface oxides within microseconds due to a high reactivity of gallium with oxygen. Because Ga oxidizes more readily than other components in these alloys, the surface oxides are dominated by gallium oxide species. These alloys thereby exhibit similar interfacial behavior to gallium in air. [6] Thus, we discuss these gallium-based alloys without distinguishing them by their bulk composition, except where warranted. Interfacial Tension ModulationMetals have significantly larger surface tension (>400 mN m À1 depending on the liquid metal [7] ) than common fluids such as water (72 mN m À1 ), as shown in Figure 1a. The large surface tension of metals is due to the metallic bonds. [4] Gallium is notable for having the highest surface tension (708 mN m À1 ) of any liquid in air near room temperature [8,9] and alloys of Ga, such as EGaIn, also have enormous surface tension (624 mN m À1 ). [10] We note the term "surface tension" refers to the tension of fluid interfaces in contact only with a vapor phase, whereas "interfacial tension" refers more broadly to the tension of fluids

show abstract

“…Combined with fascinating metallic characteristics and fluidic properties, such as large surface tension, high electrical and thermal conductivities, low viscosity, and significant deformability, room temperature liquid metals have received considerable research interest recently. In contrast to mercury, low melting point gallium based eutectic liquid metals such as EGaIn (75% gallium, 25% indium) and Galinstan (68.5% gallium, 21.5% indium, and 10% tin) are being increasingly investigated by research community in laboratories for its negligible vapour pressure and nontoxicity (Chiechi et al 2008;Hu et al 2017;Shay et al 2018). These remarkable physicochemical properties enable gallium-based liquid metals great promise for a variety of practical application including fluidic actuators (Tang et al 2015(Tang et al , 2014a, electrochemical sensors (Wei et al 2014), optical and electrical switches (Sen and Chang-Jin 2009;Wissman et al 2017;Yoo et al 2011), reconfigurable/stretchable electronics (Cheng et al 2009;Dickey 2017;Liang et al 2017), and biomedicine (Lu et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A micro-needle induced strategy for preparation of monodisperse liquid metal droplets in glass capillary microfluidics

Ren

et al. 2019

Microfluid Nanofluid

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Monodisperse micro-sized liquid metal droplets have received considerable attention for developing flexible electronics, microfluidics actuators and reconfigurable devices. Herein we report an innovative and efficient strategy for large-scale preparation of Galinstan liquid metal microdroplets with controllable sizes using a micro-needle induced glass capillary microfluidic device. By inserting a stainless steel micro-needle into the inner liquid metal phase in the glass capillary, the hydrodynamic instability of the liquid metal stream is significantly suppressed to guarantee steady fluid flow before the liquid metal is pinched off by the outer phase flow, giving rise to a stable generation of monodisperse liquid metal microdroplets. The microdroplet size dependence on the flow ratio of the continuous and dispersed-phase is investigated experimentally. A theoretical framework based on the Plateau-Rayleigh instability is proposed to explain the advantage of the micro-needle induced strategy. This strategy has great potential for the generation of high interfacial tension liquid metal emulsions.

show abstract

Surface effects of liquid metal amoeba

Cited by 29 publications

References 26 publications

Liquid metal amoeba with spontaneous pseudopodia formation and motion capability

Liquid metal amoeba with spontaneous pseudopodia formation and motion capability

Interfacial Tension Modulation of Liquid Metal via Electrochemical Oxidation

A micro-needle induced strategy for preparation of monodisperse liquid metal droplets in glass capillary microfluidics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About