• International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing
  • Vol. 3, Issue 2, 25102 (2021)
Chengjun Zhang1、2, Qing Yang1、2, Jiale Yong2、3, Chao Shan2、3, Jingzhou Zhang2、3, Xun Hou2、3, and Feng Chen2、3、*
Author Affiliations
  • 1School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, People’s Republic of China
  • 2The International Joint Research Laboratory for Micro/Nano Manufacturing and Measurement Technologies, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, People’s Republic of China
  • 3State 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
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    DOI: 10.1088/2631-7990/abeda3 Cite this Article
    Chengjun Zhang, Qing Yang, Jiale Yong, Chao Shan, Jingzhou Zhang, Xun Hou, Feng Chen. Guiding magnetic liquid metal for flexible circuit[J]. International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, 2021, 3(2): 25102 Copy Citation Text show less

    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. Supplementary material for this article is available online
    Chengjun Zhang, Qing Yang, Jiale Yong, Chao Shan, Jingzhou Zhang, Xun Hou, Feng Chen. Guiding magnetic liquid metal for flexible circuit[J]. International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, 2021, 3(2): 25102
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