Fabrication of Highly Stretchable and Wearable Elastomer Structure with Liquid Metal Encapsulated in Auxetic Channel

Abstract

Recently, soft material structures, in which liquids and droplets are introduced into solids in various shapes, have been attracting attention. These structures can be used in the fields of soft electronics, soft robotics, and wearable devices, etc. In this study, we focus on the auxetic structures, which are patterned structures with negative Poisson's ratio. Herein, we fabricated an auxetic channel structure in elastomer using 3D printer and aimed to develop a novel wearable device with liquid metal inflow. This room-temperature liquid metal has been widely used in flexible and stretchable sensors, focusing on embedding liquid metal in microchannels, liquid metal microdroplets formation, captive sensors, and liquid metal nanoparticles, etc.