• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.627-634
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• 2018

Gallium-based liquid metal, e.g., eutectic gallium-indium (EGaIn), is highly attractive as an electrode material for flexible and stretchable devices. On the liquid metal, oxide layer is spontaneously formed, which has a wide band-gap, and therefore is electrically insulating. In this paper, we fabricate a capacitor based on eutectic gallium-indium (EGaIn) liquid metal and investigate its cyclic voltammetry (CV) behavior. The EGaIn capacitor is composed of two EGaIn electrodes and electrolyte. CV curves reveal that the EGaIn capacitor shows the behavior of electric double-layer capacitors (EDLC), where the oxide layers on the EGaIn electrodes serves as the dielectric layer of EDLC. The oxide thicker than the spontaneously-formed native oxide decreases the capacitance of the EGaIn capacitor, due to increased voltage loss across the oxide layer. The EGaIn capacitor without oxide layer exhibits unstable CV curves during the repeated cycles, where self-repair characteristic of the oxide was observed. Finally, the electrolyte concentration is optimized by comparing the CV curves at various electrolyte concentrations.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.176-181
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• 2016

Recent years, supercapacitors have been attracting a growing attention as an efficient energy storage, due to their long-lifetime, device reliability, simple device structure and operation mechanism and, most importantly, high power density. Along with the increasing interest in flexible/stretchable electronics, the supercapacitors with compatible mechanical properties have been also required. A eutectic gallium-indium (EGaIn) liquid metal could be a strong candidate as a soft electrode material of the supercapacitors because of its insulating surface oxide layer for electric double layer formation. Here, we report the electrochemical study on the charging/reaction process at the interface of EGaIn liquid metal and electrolyte. Numerical fitting of the charging current curves provides the capacitance of EGaIn/insulating layer/electrolyte (${\sim}38F/m^2$). This value is two orders of magnitude higher than a capacitance of a general metal electrode/electrolyte interface.