Universal assembly of liquid metal particles in polymers enables elastic printed circuit board

Stretchable electronics using liquid-metal beads

28 February 2023

Strings of liquid-metal beads embedded in a polymer have been used to create highly stretchable printed circuit boards.

Stretchable electronics are being developed for applications such as wearable devices and soft robots. However, one problem is that the electrical resistance often changes on stretching.

Now, a team led by researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea has demonstrated printed circuit boards based on threads of liquid-metal spheres within a polymer. By applying ultrasound, the team created a rosary-like structure of large liquid-metal beads linked by smaller liquid-metal nanoparticles

Devices employing such circuit boards were highly stretchable and had high conductivities. Importantly, they could be stretched to more than 40 times their original lengths with almost no effect on their resistances.

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References

1. Science 378, 637–641 (2022). doi: 10.1126/science.abo6631