Abstract
A gallium-based liquid metal got high attention recently, due to the excellent material properties that are useful in various research areas. We report here on electric field-induced liquid metal droplet generation and falling direction manipulation. The well-analyzed electro-hydrodynamic method is a selectable way to control the liquid metal, as the liquid metal is conductive. The electric field-induced liquid metal manipulation can be affected by the flow rate (0.05~0.2 mL/min), voltage (0~7 kV), and distance (15 and 30 mm) between electrodes, which changes the volume of the electric field-induced generated liquid metal droplet and the number of the generated droplets. When the electric field intensity increases or the flow rate increases, the generated droplet volume decreases, and the number of droplets increases. With the highest voltage of 7 kV with 15 mm between electrodes at the 0.2 mL/min flow rate, the lowest volume and the largest number of the generated droplets for 10 s were ~10 nL and 541, respectively. Additionally, we controlled the direction of the generated droplet by changing the electric field. The direction of the liquid metal droplet was controlled with the maximum angle of ~12°. Moreover, we exhibited a short circuit demonstration by controlling the volume or falling direction of the generated liquid metal droplet with an applied electric field.
Highlights
Published: 20 September 2021An electro-hydrodynamic method for controlling the behavior of the liquid has been widely investigated [1,2]
Based on fundamental electro-hydrodynamic studies of the gallium-based liquid metal droplet generation, we demonstrated the shorting of an open circuit utilizing the on-demand volume and falling direction control of the liquid metal, as shown in Figures 9 and 10
We investigated the electro-hydrodynamic behavior of the galliumbased liquid metal
Summary
An electro-hydrodynamic method for controlling the behavior of the liquid has been widely investigated [1,2]. Fundamental studies using pure diverse liquids to understand the electro-hydrodynamic behavior are well investigated [33]. There is little study to understand the electro-hydrodynamic behavior itself, of the gallium-based liquid metal. We report on the liquid metal droplet generation and falling direction manipulation with an applied high electric field. We could control the volume of the generated liquid metal droplet by changing the electric field or liquid metal injection rate Based on these studies, connecting a disconnected circuit using the volume control or falling direction manipulation of the generated liquid metal droplet was demonstrated
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