Controllable exothermic effect at the contact interface between liquid metal gallium and silver chloride

Abstract

Liquid metal gallium (LM-Ga) has aroused wide interest due to fluidity and deformability in contrast with solid metal. Especially, an intriguing phenomenon was found that a large amount of heat was released after LM-Ga was mixed with silver chloride (AgCl) for a period of time, accompanied by the presence of hydrochloric acid (HCl). Through a series of characterization, it was discussed that the process was divided into three stages: slow heating, violent reaction and slow cooling, which involved four different reactions where a threshold temperature of 35 °C was required for this vigorous reaction to occur. Moreover, by adjusting the temperature and humidity, the occurrence time of the violent reaction could be extended or shortened, and the maximum temperature could be tunable in the range of 50–280 °C by changing the ratio of reactant. These mechanism of the reaction of LM-Ga with AgCl are expected to be applied to a series of fields such as tumor thermal ablation, antibacterial dressing and Ga2O3 optoelectronic devices.