A versatile approach for preparing stable and high concentration liquid metal nanoparticles on a large scale

Abstract

Liquid metal is increasingly attracting attention because of the fluidity properties and the electrical and thermal conductivity of metals. However, the preparation of stable liquid metal nanoparticles (LM NPs) is facing a great challenge. Liquid metal is prone to be oxidized when exposed to water and air. Because of the high density and surface tension, liquid metal tends to aggregate and precipitate. To address this challenge, we have developed a grinding technology that not only produces LM NPs with a narrower size distribution but also has high production efficiency and high concentration (more than 10 wt.%). A new polymer was synthesized to reduce the particle size and stabilize the NPs during the grinding process. The LM NPs stabilized with comb-like polymer have a smaller diameter of about 120 nm in deionized water and 80 nm in propylene glycol methyl ether (PM), which can maintain relative stability for a period of >90 days. The high concentration LM NPs play an important role in the fields of electronic product cooling, biomedicine, tissue engineering, intelligent hardware, 3 D printing, flexible electronics, artificial intelligence, aerospace, and so on.