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Liquid-Metal Enabled Droplet Circuits
Conventional electrical circuits are generally rigid in their components and working styles, which are not flexible and stretchable. As an alternative, liquid-metal-based soft electronics offer important opportunities for innovation in modern bioelectronics and electrical engineering. However, their...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6187381/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30424151 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi9050218 |
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author | Ren, Yi Liu, Jing |
author_facet | Ren, Yi Liu, Jing |
author_sort | Ren, Yi |
collection | PubMed |
description | Conventional electrical circuits are generally rigid in their components and working styles, which are not flexible and stretchable. As an alternative, liquid-metal-based soft electronics offer important opportunities for innovation in modern bioelectronics and electrical engineering. However, their operation in wet environments such as aqueous solution, biological tissue or allied subjects still encounters many technical challenges. Here, we propose a new conceptual electrical circuit, termed as droplet circuit, to fulfill the special needs described above. Such unconventional circuits are immersed in a solution and composed of liquid metal droplets, conductive ions or wires, such as carbon nanotubes. With specifically-designed topological or directional structures/patterns, the liquid-metal droplets composing the circuit can be discrete and disconnected from each other, while achieving the function of electron transport through conductive routes or the quantum tunneling effect. The conductive wires serve as electron transfer stations when the distance between two separate liquid-metal droplets is far beyond that which quantum tunneling effects can support. The unique advantage of the current droplet circuit lies in the fact that it allows parallel electron transport, high flexibility, self-healing, regulation and multi-point connectivity without needing to worry about the circuit break. This would extend the category of classical electrical circuits into newly emerging areas like realizing room temperature quantum computing, making brain-like intelligence or nerve–machine interface electronics, etc. The mechanisms and potential scientific issues of the droplet circuits are interpreted and future prospects in this direction are outlined. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6187381 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-61873812018-11-01 Liquid-Metal Enabled Droplet Circuits Ren, Yi Liu, Jing Micromachines (Basel) Perspective Conventional electrical circuits are generally rigid in their components and working styles, which are not flexible and stretchable. As an alternative, liquid-metal-based soft electronics offer important opportunities for innovation in modern bioelectronics and electrical engineering. However, their operation in wet environments such as aqueous solution, biological tissue or allied subjects still encounters many technical challenges. Here, we propose a new conceptual electrical circuit, termed as droplet circuit, to fulfill the special needs described above. Such unconventional circuits are immersed in a solution and composed of liquid metal droplets, conductive ions or wires, such as carbon nanotubes. With specifically-designed topological or directional structures/patterns, the liquid-metal droplets composing the circuit can be discrete and disconnected from each other, while achieving the function of electron transport through conductive routes or the quantum tunneling effect. The conductive wires serve as electron transfer stations when the distance between two separate liquid-metal droplets is far beyond that which quantum tunneling effects can support. The unique advantage of the current droplet circuit lies in the fact that it allows parallel electron transport, high flexibility, self-healing, regulation and multi-point connectivity without needing to worry about the circuit break. This would extend the category of classical electrical circuits into newly emerging areas like realizing room temperature quantum computing, making brain-like intelligence or nerve–machine interface electronics, etc. The mechanisms and potential scientific issues of the droplet circuits are interpreted and future prospects in this direction are outlined. MDPI 2018-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC6187381/ /pubmed/30424151 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi9050218 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Perspective Ren, Yi Liu, Jing Liquid-Metal Enabled Droplet Circuits |
title | Liquid-Metal Enabled Droplet Circuits |
title_full | Liquid-Metal Enabled Droplet Circuits |
title_fullStr | Liquid-Metal Enabled Droplet Circuits |
title_full_unstemmed | Liquid-Metal Enabled Droplet Circuits |
title_short | Liquid-Metal Enabled Droplet Circuits |
title_sort | liquid-metal enabled droplet circuits |
topic | Perspective |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6187381/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30424151 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi9050218 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT renyi liquidmetalenableddropletcircuits AT liujing liquidmetalenableddropletcircuits |