Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Sep 22;21(19):6329. doi: 10.3390/s21196329.
Metamaterial is becoming increasingly important owing to its unique physical properties and breakthrough applications. So far, most metamaterials that have been developed are made of rigid materials and structures, which may restrict their practical adaptation performances. Recently, with the further development of liquid metal, some efforts have explored metamaterials based on such tunable electronic inks. Liquid metal has high flexibility and good electrical conductivity, which provides more possibilities for transformable metamaterials. Here, we developed a new flexible liquid-metal metamaterial that is highly reconfigurable and could significantly extend the working limit facing current devices. The printed electronics method was adopted to fabricate artificial units and then construct various potential transformable metamaterials. Based on metamaterial theory and printing technology, typical structured flexible liquid-metal electromagnetic metamaterials were designed and fabricated. The electronic and magnetic characteristics of the liquid-metal-based electromagnetic metamaterials were evaluated through simulated analysis and experimental measurement. Particularly, the potential of liquid-metal metamaterials in biomedical sensing was investigated. Further, the future outlook of liquid-metal metamaterials and their application in diverse categories were prospected.
超材料因其独特的物理性质和突破性的应用而变得越来越重要。到目前为止，大多数已经开发的超材料都是由刚性材料和结构制成的，这可能限制了它们的实际适应性能。最近，随着液态金属的进一步发展，一些研究探索了基于这种可调谐电子油墨的超材料。液态金属具有高柔韧性和良好的导电性，为可变形超材料提供了更多的可能性。在这里，我们开发了一种新的柔性液态金属超材料，它具有高度的可重构性，可以显著扩展现有器件面临的工作极限。采用印刷电子方法制造人工单元，然后构建各种潜在的可变形超材料。基于超材料理论和印刷技术，设计并制作了典型的结构柔性液态金属电磁超材料。通过模拟分析和实验测量评估了基于液态金属的电磁超材料的电子和磁特性。特别地，研究了液态金属超材料在生物医学传感中的潜力。此外，还展望了液态金属超材料的未来前景及其在不同领域的应用。
