Abstract
Soft electronics and robotics are in increasing demand for diverse applications. However, soft devices typically lack rigid enclosures which can increase their susceptibility to damage and lead to failure and premature disposal. This creates a need for soft and stretchable functional materials with resilient and regenerative properties. Here we show a liquid metal-elastomer-plasticizer composite for soft electronics with robust circuitry that is self-healing, reconfigurable, and ultimately recyclable. This is achieved through an embossing technique for on-demand formation of conductive liquid metal networks which can be reprocessed to rewire or completely recycle the soft electronic composite. These skin-like electronics stretch to 1200% strain with minimal change in electrical resistance, sustain numerous damage events under load without losing electrical conductivity, and are recycled to generate new devices at the end of life. These soft composites with adaptive liquid metal microstructures can find broad use for soft electronics and robotics with improved lifetime and recyclability.
Highlights
Soft electronics and robotics are in increasing demand for diverse applications
The liquid metal droplets are initially dispersed in the matrix as electrically insulated, discrete particles that are transformed through a scalable embossing approach into connected liquid metal networks
Rehealable and recyclable soft electronics that can be stretched to high strains (>1000%) can provide robust solutions for emerging fields like soft and stretchable electronics and soft robotics
Summary
Soft electronics and robotics are in increasing demand for diverse applications. soft devices typically lack rigid enclosures which can increase their susceptibility to damage and lead to failure and premature disposal. This is achieved through an embossing technique for ondemand formation of conductive liquid metal networks which can be reprocessed to rewire or completely recycle the soft electronic composite These skin-like electronics stretch to 1200% strain with minimal change in electrical resistance, sustain numerous damage events under load without losing electrical conductivity, and are recycled to generate new devices at the end of life. Rehealable and recyclable electronic skins based on dynamic covalent networks with rigid conductive particles can be created, but healing requires manual intervention and the networks are not stretchable beyond a few percent strain[19] Another approach is to utilize solid–liquid composites, such as liquid metal-based elastomers[20,21,22,23,24,25,26]. Embossing can tune initial resistance over two orders of magnitude with initial electrical conductivities as high as 150 S cm−1 at
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