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Shape-Programmable Liquid Metal Fibers

Conductive and stretchable fibers are the cornerstone of intelligent textiles and imperceptible electronics. Among existing fiber conductors, gallium-based liquid metals (LMs) featuring high conductivity, fluidity, and self-healing are excellent candidates for highly stretchable fibers with sensing,...

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Autores principales: Ma, Biao, Zhang, Jin, Chen, Gangsheng, Chen, Yi, Xu, Chengtao, Lei, Lanjie, Liu, Hong
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9856024/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36671863
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bios13010028
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author Ma, Biao
Zhang, Jin
Chen, Gangsheng
Chen, Yi
Xu, Chengtao
Lei, Lanjie
Liu, Hong
author_facet Ma, Biao
Zhang, Jin
Chen, Gangsheng
Chen, Yi
Xu, Chengtao
Lei, Lanjie
Liu, Hong
author_sort Ma, Biao
collection PubMed
description Conductive and stretchable fibers are the cornerstone of intelligent textiles and imperceptible electronics. Among existing fiber conductors, gallium-based liquid metals (LMs) featuring high conductivity, fluidity, and self-healing are excellent candidates for highly stretchable fibers with sensing, actuation, power generation, and interconnection functionalities. However, current LM fibers fabricated by direct injection or surface coating have a limitation in shape programmability. This hinders their applications in functional fibers with tunable electromechanical response and miniaturization. Here, we reported a simple and efficient method to create shape-programmable LM fibers using the phase transition of gallium. Gallium metal wires in the solid state can be easily shaped into a 3D helical structure, and the structure can be preserved after coating the wire with polyurethane and liquifying the metal. The 3D helical LM fiber offered enhanced stretchability with a high breaking strain of 1273% and showed invariable conductance over 283% strain. Moreover, we can reduce the fiber diameter by stretching the fiber during the solidification of polyurethane. We also demonstrated applications of the programmed fibers in self-powered strain sensing, heart rate monitoring, airflow, and humidity sensing. This work provided simple and facile ways toward functional LM fibers, which may facilitate the broad applications of LM fibers in e-skins, wearable computation, soft robots, and smart fabrics.
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spelling pubmed-98560242023-01-21 Shape-Programmable Liquid Metal Fibers Ma, Biao Zhang, Jin Chen, Gangsheng Chen, Yi Xu, Chengtao Lei, Lanjie Liu, Hong Biosensors (Basel) Article Conductive and stretchable fibers are the cornerstone of intelligent textiles and imperceptible electronics. Among existing fiber conductors, gallium-based liquid metals (LMs) featuring high conductivity, fluidity, and self-healing are excellent candidates for highly stretchable fibers with sensing, actuation, power generation, and interconnection functionalities. However, current LM fibers fabricated by direct injection or surface coating have a limitation in shape programmability. This hinders their applications in functional fibers with tunable electromechanical response and miniaturization. Here, we reported a simple and efficient method to create shape-programmable LM fibers using the phase transition of gallium. Gallium metal wires in the solid state can be easily shaped into a 3D helical structure, and the structure can be preserved after coating the wire with polyurethane and liquifying the metal. The 3D helical LM fiber offered enhanced stretchability with a high breaking strain of 1273% and showed invariable conductance over 283% strain. Moreover, we can reduce the fiber diameter by stretching the fiber during the solidification of polyurethane. We also demonstrated applications of the programmed fibers in self-powered strain sensing, heart rate monitoring, airflow, and humidity sensing. This work provided simple and facile ways toward functional LM fibers, which may facilitate the broad applications of LM fibers in e-skins, wearable computation, soft robots, and smart fabrics. MDPI 2022-12-26 /pmc/articles/PMC9856024/ /pubmed/36671863 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bios13010028 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Ma, Biao
Zhang, Jin
Chen, Gangsheng
Chen, Yi
Xu, Chengtao
Lei, Lanjie
Liu, Hong
Shape-Programmable Liquid Metal Fibers
title Shape-Programmable Liquid Metal Fibers
title_full Shape-Programmable Liquid Metal Fibers
title_fullStr Shape-Programmable Liquid Metal Fibers
title_full_unstemmed Shape-Programmable Liquid Metal Fibers
title_short Shape-Programmable Liquid Metal Fibers
title_sort shape-programmable liquid metal fibers
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9856024/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36671863
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bios13010028
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AT leilanjie shapeprogrammableliquidmetalfibers
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