• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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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.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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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.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.8-13
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• 2016

A pattern-switchable origami antenna is designed with paper using inkjet-printing technology. The proposed antenna can be switched between loop and dipole antenna modes by folding and unfolding the paper, respectively. The proposed antenna is designed for the resonant frequencies of both modes to be 1.85 GHz. Eutectic gallium-indium liquid metal is introduced in order to avoid cracks in the conductive ink when the paper is folded. The performance of the proposed antenna is demonstrated through simulation and measurement results and antenna gain of dipole-mode and loop-mode are -4 dBi and -5 dBi, respectively. Also, the nulls of both dipole and loop modes compensate nulls from each mode.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.147-154
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• 2022

We demonstrate a new double-layer structure for stretchable interconnects, where the top surface of a serpentine polyimide support is coated with a thin eutectic gallium-indium liquid metal layer. Because the liquid metal layer is constantly fixed on the solid serpentine body in this liquid-on-solid structure, the overall stretching is accomplished by widening the solid frame itself, with little variation in the total length and cross-sectional area of the current path. Therefore, we can achieve both invariant resistance and infinite fatigue life by combining the stretchable configuration of the underlying body with the freely deformable nature of the top liquid conductor. Further, we fabricated various types of double-layer interconnects as narrow as 10 ㎛ using the roll-painting and lift-off patterning technique based on conventional photolithography and quantitatively validated their beneficial properties. The new interconnecting structure is expected to be widely used in applications requiring high-performance and high-density stretchable circuits owing to its superior reliability and capability to be monolithically integrated with thin-film devices.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2015.07a
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• pp.1235-1236
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• 2015

This paper reports hyperelastically stretchable strain gauges based on liquid metal (eutectic gallium-indium;EGaIn) and a platinum-catalyzed silicone elastomer ($Ecoflex^{TM}$). A custom liquidmetal patterning setup was operated to fabricate liquidmetal straingauge on flexible substrate. The printed strain gauges were tested under cyclic uniaxial stretching, twisting, even bending of human finger. By engineering the orientation of solid wires placed over two terminals of t he printed liquid metal resistor, we stably achieved the stretchability of ~800 % which is the highest value reported so far, to the best of our knowledge.