Silanized Liquid-Metal Nanoparticles for Responsive Electronics

Room-temperature liquid-metal particles are a burgeoning material platform for stimuli-responsive electronics, self-healing circuitry, stretchable/flexible conductors, drug delivery, and wearable devices. The ability to chemically tune the nanoscale surface oxide of liquid-metal particles is critical to these applications. To this end, a method of silanizing liquid gallium alloy particles has been developed. The benefits of alkoxysilane ligands are demonstrated by orthogonal functionalizations to produce chemically diverse, multifunctional hybrid liquid-metal nanoparticles. Additionally, architected stretchable conductors, called polymerized liquid-metal networks, were fabricated using hitherto inaccessible chemistries with enhanced electromechanical performance. These advancements have downstream implications for particle processing, device fabrication, long-term stability, and functional behaviors of liquid-metal particle systems.