Reconfigurable Magnetic Liquid Metal Robot for High-Performance Droplet Manipulation

Droplet manipulation is crucial for diverse applications ranging from bioassay to medical diagnosis. Current magnetic field-driven manipulation strategies are mainly based on fixed or partially tunable structures, which limits their flexibility and versatility. Here, a reconfigurable magnetic liquid metal robot (MLMR) is proposed to address these challenges. Diverse droplet manipulation behaviors including steady transport, oscillatory transport, and release can be achieved by the MLMR, and their underlying physical mechanisms are revealed. Moreover, benefiting from the magnetic field-induced active deformability and temperature-induced phase transition characteristics, its droplet-loading capacity and shape-locking/unlocking switching can be flexibly adjusted. Because of the fluidity-based adaptive deformability, MLMR can manipulate droplets in challenging confined environments. Significantly, MLMR can accomplish cooperative manipulation of multiple droplets efficiently through on-demand self-splitting and merging. The high-performance droplet manipulation using the reconfigurable and multifunctional MLMR unfolds new potential in microfluidics, biochemistry, and other interdisciplinary fields.

Automated summary

A reconfigurable magnetic liquid metal robot (MLMR) is proposed for droplet manipulation, which can achieve diverse manipulation behaviors and flexible shape adjustment through magnetic field drive. This technology has broad application potential in microfluidics, biochemistry, and other fields.