Liquid Metal

We designed a soil-inspired chemical system that consists of nanostructured minerals, starch granules and liquid metals. The soil-inspired material possesses chemical, optical and mechanical responsiveness to yield write–erase functions in electrical performance. The composite can also modulate bacterial growth both in vitro and in vivo, such as enriches gut bacteria diversity, rectifies tetracycline-induced gut microbiome dysbiosis and ameliorates dextran sulfate sodium-induced rodent colitis symptoms within rodent models.

In this review, we systematically summarize the attributes, fabrication methods, and applications of gallium-based liquid metal particles. Existing challenges and future opportunities regarding liquid metal particles are discussed herein.

We demonstrated that sonication of gallium or gallium-based liquid metals in an aqueous solution of vinyl monomers could lead to rapid free radical polymerization, without the need for conventional molecular initiators.

We presented a completely soft, stretchable silicone composite doped with thermochromic pigments and innervated with liquid metal. The ability to deform the liquid metal couples geometric changes to Joule heating, thus enabling tunable thermo-mechanochromic sensing of touch and strain.

In this work, we conducted an in situ investigation of phase behavior for gallium-based liquid metal nanoparticles and discover the unprecedented coexistence of solid particles in spherical liquid metal shells without the support of a crystalline substrate.

In this work, we experimentally demonstrated strong UV plasmonic resonances of eutectic gallium-indium liquid-metal alloy nanoparticles suspended in ethanol. We rationalise experimental results through a theoretical model based on Mie theory.

In this work, we showed the development of a vapor cavity generating ultrasonic platform for nebulizing liquid metal within aqueous media for the one-step production of stable and functional liquid metal NPs.

We developed a strategy to graft polymeric coating on liquid metal nanoparticles and the resulting nanoparticles can remain stable in biological buffers for at least 60 days without noticeable oxidation.

We designed a liquid metal based composite that can change from non-conductive states to fully conductive states with mechanical pressure. Therefore, we can simply use a pen to create arbitrary conductive circuits on a soft substrate.

We developed a super facile way to pattern liquid metal into complicated microstructures with branches and dead-ends. The process only took less than 1 minute.