4.8 Article

Printable Self-Activated Liquid Metal Stretchable Conductors from Polyvinylpyrrolidone-Functionalized Eutectic Gallium Indium Composites

Journal

ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES
Volume 14, Issue 8, Pages 10747-10757

Publisher

AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c20185

Keywords

print; stretchable; conductor; liquid metal; composite

Funding

  1. Creative Materials Discovery Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) - Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) [NRF-2019M3D1A2103917]
  2. National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) - Korean Government (MSIT) [NRF-2020R1A2C2010067, NRF-2021M3D1A2052765]
  3. Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT)

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This study developed a chemical strategy to surface-functionalize liquid metal particles, eliminating the need for additional mechanical activation processes for stretchable electronic circuits. The resulting composite layers have high conductivity and stretchability, making them applicable to traditional stretchable electronics, healable stretchable electronics, and shape-morphable applications.
Stretchable electronic circuits are critical in a variety of next-generation electronics applications, including soft robots, wearable technologies, and biomedical applications. To date, printable composite conductors comprising various types of conductive fillers have been suggested to achieve high electrical conductance and excellent stretchability. Among them, liquid metal particles have been considered as a viable candidate tiller that can meet the necessary prerequisites. However, a mechanical activation process is needed to generate interconnected liquid channels inside elastomeric polymers. In this study, we have developed a chemical strategy of surface-functionalizing liquid metal particles to eliminate the necessity of additional mechanical activation processes. We found that the characteristic conformations of the polyvinylpyrrolidone surrounding eutectic gallium indium particles are highly dependent on the molecular weight of polyvinylpyrrolidone. By virtue of the specific chemical roles of polyvinylpyrrolidone, the as-printed composite layers are highly conductive and stretchable, exhibiting an electrical conductivity approaching 8372 S/cm at 100% strain and an invariant resistance change of 0.92 even at 75% strain after a 60,000 cycle test. The results demonstrate that the self-activated liquid metal-based composite conductors are applicable to traditional stretchable electronics, healable stretchable electronics, and shape-morphable applications.

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