High-Efficiency Large-Area Printed Multilayer Liquid Metal Wires for Stretchable Biomedical Sensors with Recyclability

Stretchable conductors are essential for soft robots, wearable on-skin electronic technologies, and bioelectronics. The utilization of sophisticated stretchable conductors requires a new, simple, rapid, and large-scale printing process whose features include high stretchability, high precision, multilayers, and recyclability simultaneously for commercial wearable electronics. To address this need, an LM (liquid metal) wire was developed using a simple, rapid, and large-scale soft stamper-based printing process and employed to realize LM wire-based conductors and capacitors, which simultaneously offer high stretchability (>380%), high precision past 50 pm, and electromechanical response stability after stretching for up to an hour. Based on the excellent electromechanical responses, the LM wire-based capacitors, as strain sensors, attached to finger joints resulted in precise gesture detection. Meanwhile, a simple transparent wearable e-skin consisting of a 6 x 6 LM wire-based capacitor array without rigid parts successfully monitored a multi-point touch. At last, a portable noninvasive stretchable multilayer LM wire-based pulse sensor with recyclability is fabricated to monitor the patient's heartbeats. The experimental results reveal that the stretchable biomedical sensors have the potential to help patients to improve their life in healthcare, including replacement prosthetic devices, daily and sports activity tracking, continuous health monitoring, and others.

Automated summary

The article introduces a new method for preparing LM wires and applying them to achieve stretchable conductors and capacitors with high stretchability and precision. In addition, the proposed wearable devices and biomedical sensors offer potential assistance and applications in the healthcare field.