Liquid Metal-Based Electronics for On-Skin Healthcare

Jinwei Cao, Xin Li, Yiwei Liu, Guang Zhu, Run Wei Li

Research output: Journal PublicationReview articlepeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Wearable devices are receiving growing interest in modern technologies for realizing multiple on-skin purposes, including flexible display, flexible e-textiles, and, most importantly, flexible epidermal healthcare. A ‘BEER’ requirement, i.e., biocompatibility, electrical elasticity, and robustness, is first proposed here for all the on-skin healthcare electronics for epidermal applications. This requirement would guide the designing of the next-generation on-skin healthcare electronics. For conventional stretchable electronics, the rigid conductive materials, e.g., gold nanoparticles and silver nanofibers, would suffer from an easy-to-fail interface with elastic substrates due to a Young’s modulus mismatch. Liquid metal (LM) with high conductivity and stretchability has emerged as a promising solution for robust stretchable epidermal electronics. In addition, the fundamental physical, chemical, and biocompatible properties of LM are illustrated. Furthermore, the fabrication strategies of LM are outlined for pure LM, LM composites, and LM circuits based on the surface tension control. Five dominant epidermal healthcare applications of LM are illustrated, including electrodes, interconnectors, mechanical sensors, thermal management, and biomedical and sustainable applications. Finally, the key challenges and perspectives of LM are identified for the future research vision.

Original languageEnglish
Article number84
JournalBiosensors
Volume13
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2023

Keywords

  • electrodes
  • epidermal healthcare
  • liquid metal
  • sensors
  • stretchable electronics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Analytical Chemistry
  • Biotechnology
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Instrumentation
  • Engineering (miscellaneous)
  • Clinical Biochemistry

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