Liquid metals as soft electromechanical actuators

Cole, Tim and Tang, Shi Yang (2022) Liquid metals as soft electromechanical actuators. Materials Advances, 3 (1), 173-185. (doi:10.1039/d1ma00885d).

Record type: Review

Abstract

Leveraging the unique properties of liquids, such as surface tension, capillary action, reconfigurability, nearly unlimited stretchability, and viscosity has enabled the development of a wide range of soft actuators, presenting vast potential to revolutionise wearable healthcare devices, manufacturing, reconfigurable electronics, and robotics. Gallium (Ga) based liquid metals (GaLMs) are a remarkable family of functional fluidic materials that can actuate electrically for realising electromechanical functions. Such actuators are simple, highly responsive, highly controllable, and reversible, which has led to the creation of useful devices such as reconfigurable antennas, artificial muscles, electrical switches, and soft robots, just to name a few. Herein, this review succinctly and critically summarises recent advances in research on using GaLMs as electromechanical actuators. First, the properties of GaLMs are introduced, and then the methods for their electrical actuation and the applications thereof are discussed. Finally, an outlook is offered, highlighting the research challenges faced by liquid metal electromechanical actuators in order to develop into commercial devices.

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Published date: 7 January 2022

Additional Information: Funding Information: Dr Shiyang Tang currently is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Birmingham, UK. He received his BEng (1st class honours) in Electrical Engineering and PhD in Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) from the RMIT University, Australia, in 2012 and 2015, respectively. He was the recipient of the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council, and the Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow from the University of Wollongong, Australia. Dr Tang’s research interests include developing microfluidic platforms for biomedical studies and liquid metal enabled micro-/nanoscale platforms. He has published more than 85 journal papers. Funding Information: S.-Y.T. is grateful for the support from the Royal Society, UK (IEC/NSFC/201223). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Royal Society of Chemistry.