Abstract

Liquid metal (LM) has potential applications in flexible electronics due to its high electrical conductivity and high flexibility. However, common methods of printing LM circuits on soft substrates lack controllability, precision, and the ability to repair a damaged circuit. In this paper, we propose a method that uses a magnetic field to guide a magnetic LM (MLM) droplet to print and repair a flexible LM circuit on a femtosecond (fs) laser-patterned silicone surface. After mixing magnetic iron (Fe) particles into LM, the movement of the resultant MLM droplet could be controlled by a magnetic field. A patterned structure composed of the untreated flat domain and the LM-repellent rough microstructure produced by fs laser ablation was prepared on the silicone substrate. As an MLM droplet was guided onto the designed pattern, a soft LM circuit with smooth, uniform, and high-precision LM lines was obtained. Interestingly, the MLM droplet could also be guided to repair the circuit broken LM lines, and the repaired circuit maintained its original electrical properties. A flexible tensile sensor was prepared based on the printed LM circuit, which detected the bending degree of a finger.

Details

Title
Guiding magnetic liquid metal for flexible circuit
Author
Zhang, Chengjun 1 ; Yang, Qing 1 ; Yong, Jiale 2 ; Chao, Shan 2 ; Zhang, Jingzhou 2 ; Hou, Xun 2 ; Chen, Feng 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, People’s Republic of China; The International Joint Research Laboratory for Micro/Nano Manufacturing and Measurement Technologies, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, People’s Republic of China 
 State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing System Engineering and Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Photonics Technology for Information, School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, People’s Republic of China; The International Joint Research Laboratory for Micro/Nano Manufacturing and Measurement Technologies, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, People’s Republic of China 
Publication year
2021
Publication date
Apr 2021
Publisher
IOP Publishing
e-ISSN
26317990
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2511505006
Copyright
© 2021. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.