Abstract
Recent breakthrough in eutectic gallium-indium alloy has revealed its great potential in modern electronic engineering. Here, we established a general method towards super-fast fabrication of flexible electronics via semi-liquid metal and adhesion-selection enabled rolling and transfer (SMART) printing on various substrates. Based on the semiliquid metal and its adhesion-difference on specifically designed target materials, we demonstrated that the rolling and transfer printing method could serve to rapidly manufacture a wide variety of complicated patterns with high resolution and large size. The process is much faster than most of the currently existing electronic fabrication strategies including liquid metal printing ever developed, and the cost either in time or consumption rate is rather low. As illustrated, a series of functional flexible and stretchable electronics such as multiple layer and large area circuits were fabricated to show their superior merit in combination with electrical conductivity and deformability. In addition, it was also demonstrated that the electronics fabricated in this way exhibited good repeatablity. A most noteworthy advantage is that all the fabrication processes could be highly automatic in the sense that user-friendly machines can thus be developed. This method paves a practical way for super-fast soft electronics manufacture and is expected to play an important role in the coming industry and consumer electronics.
摘要
近年来液态金属取得了突破性进展, 其在现代柔性电子领域显示出巨大的应用前景. 本文基于半液态金属墨水及其在不同基底表面的选择性粘附机理, 提出了一种具有普适性的柔性电子超快速制造技术. 该技术成本低, 可用于制备大面积高精度液态金属线路, 且制造速率远远超过经典电子制造及液态金属电路打印技术. 本文制备了一系列具有优良的电学稳定性和适应性的柔性、 可拉伸电路, 如多层电路、 大面积电路以及拉伸传感器等. 此外, 基于该技术制备的液态金属电路具有可回收的优点. 该技术的实施无需复杂设备, 有望在今后的工业生产和个人消费电子领域发挥重要作用.
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Acknowledgements
This work is partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Key Project (91748206) and Dean’s Research Funding and the Frontier Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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Rui Guo received his BE degree in biomedical engineering from Tsinghua University in 2016. Now he is a PhD candidate majored in biomedical engineering in Tsinghua University. His interest focuses on gallium-based liquid metal flexible and wearable electronics.
Jing Liu is a jointly appointed professor of Tsinghua University and Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He also performs visiting research at both Purdue University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research on liquid metal soft machines, biomaterials, printed electronics, and chip cooling initiated many game changing technologies.
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Semi-liquid metal and adhesion-selection enabled rolling and transfer (SMART) printing: A generalized method towards fast fabrication of flexible electronics
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Guo, R., Yao, S., Sun, X. et al. Semi-liquid metal and adhesion-selection enabled rolling and transfer (SMART) printing: A general method towards fast fabrication of flexible electronics. Sci. China Mater. 62, 982–994 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40843-018-9400-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40843-018-9400-2