Liquid Metal Enabled Droplet Circuits

Abstract

Conventional electrical circuits are generally rigid in their components and working styles which are not flexible and stretchable. From an alternative, liquid metal based soft electronics is offering important opportunities for innovating modern bioelectronics and electrical engineering. However, its running in wet environments such as aqueous solution, biological tissues or allied subjects still encounters many technical challenges. Here, we proposed a new conceptual electrical circuit, termed as droplet circuits, to fulfill the special needs as raised in the above mentioned areas. Such unconventional circuits are immersed in solution and composed of liquid metal droplets, conductive ions or wires such as carbon nanotubes. With specifically designed topological or directional structures/patterns, the liquid metal droplets composing the circuit can be discretely existing and disconnected from each other, while achieving the function of electron transport through conductive routes or quantum tunneling effect. The conductive wires serve as the electron transfer stations when the distance between two separate liquid metal droplets is far beyond than that quantum tunneling effects can support. The unique advantage of the current droplet circuit lies in that it allows parallel electron transport, high flexibility, self-healing, regulativity and multi-point connectivity, without needing to worry about circuit break. This would extend the category of classical electrical circuits into the newly emerging areas like realizing room temperature quantum computing, making brain-like intelligence or nerve-machine interface electronics etc. The mechanisms and potential scientific issues of the droplet circuits are interpreted. Future prospects along this direction are outlined.