Recent Advances in Deformable Circuit Components with Liquid Metal

Deformable electronics, specifically those incorporating liquid metal, allow for previously inaccessible mechanical behavior and exciting new technologies. This is demonstrated by recent, promising advances in the fabrication, characterization, device performance, and applications of liquid metal electronics. Through the use of liquid metals and soft, stretchable materials, it is shown that devices that provide stretchability and improved safety and comfort between humans and machines can achieve comparable or better electrical performance than conventional alternatives. Many of the latest major advances in liquid metal electronics focus on fundamental, deformable, passive circuit components and materials including capacitors, inductors, resistors, electrodes, wires, and composite materials, such as advances in biomimicry and deformation-based sensing using both capacitors and inductors. Liquid metal passive components and materials have led to further progress in deformable secondary devices and applications such as antennas, actuators, power sources, and thermal management devices, including mechanical tuning for antennas, self-sensing actuators, and power sources operational under stress. While deformable liquid metal electronics are still faced with challenges, the continued expansion of the field of liquid metal circuits is dramatically altering the research landscape of reconfigurable, self-healable, and magnetically controllable electronics and revolutionalizing the way that electronics will be used in the future.