Battery & Electrodes
Based on our novel coating technology, we expand our coating and printing skills to gallium-indium liquid metal based flexible electrodes, the membrane fabrication for hydrogen production systems through water electrolysis, and so on.
Sintering-less & Coffee-ring-less stretchable liquid metal electrode
Self-sinterable gallium-based liquid metal (LM) ink for a handy drop-casting coating method is developed. The fabricated LM electrode is coffee-ring-free and bilayer-free, which guarantees high electrical conductivity, wettability, flexibility, and stretchability. The ink consists of Galinstan, ethanol-water mixture, hydrochloric acid, and polyvinylpyrrolidone. The binary mixture provides excellent wetting conditions and suppresses a coffee-ring stain from Marangoni mixing. The acid removes an oxide layer on the LM inter- face. The colloidal interaction forces by self-assembled polyvinylpyrrolidone induce avalanche coalescences of the particles at the end of evaporation, which produces a thin and uniform dried conductive layer. The acid and polymer provide a bilayer-free structure and electrification without any post sintering. The drop-casted self-transformed LM electrode showed excellent electrical resistance of O (0.1–1 Ω) on folding and stretching conditions. It is believed that this method can serve as flexible and stretchable electrodes, on various substances for soft robots and wearable devices, without any complicated post-process.
Related publication: K. Park, J. Pyeon, S.H. Jeong, Y.-J. Yoon, and H. Kim, "Avalanche coalescence of liquid metal particles for uniform flexible and stretchable electrodes," Adv. Mater. Interfaces 9(35), 2201693 (2022)