Highly Stretchable and Biocompatible Liquid Metal-Elastomer Conductors for Self-Healing Electronics

Highly stretchable, conductive, biocompatible conductors, and connectors are crucial for the fabrication of flexible devices. However, it remains a problem to get highly stretchable, conductive materials with low cost on a large scale. Another problem in production is the connection between soft and rigid components. Here, a new conductive nanocomposite is reported by mixing the 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid (MUA) modified liquid metal (LM) nanoparticles with polystyrene-block-polybutadiene-block-polystyrene (SBS), which is biocompatible (in vivo and in vitro), conductive (12 000 S cm(-1) of conductivity), and stretchable (800% of elongation). Apart from its good performance, this material can be produced on a large scale by using a commercial polymer product and a straightforward physical production process. MUA is used to compromise the dense gallium oxide shell of liquid metal nanoparticles such that the whole composite can become conductive. By using resin to modify this composite, this new conductive material can be adhesive and highly conductive, and serve as a stable and efficient connector between soft conductor and rigid component.