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Numerical Investigation on the Piezo-Resistive Effect of Ga-Based Liquid Metal Filled Elastomers

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Abstract

Gallium-based liquid metal/elastomer matrix composites (LMECs) have attracted increasing attention in stretchable electronics, soft robots and sensors due to their combination of high electrical conductivity and liquid fluidity. Their electrical performance is significantly dependent on droplet size, morphology and the Ga2O3 layer surrounding the LM droplets. Numerical results demonstrated that imposing only a mild pressure of 0.25 MPa could lead to the rupture of LM droplets during mechanical sintering. The electromechanical stability in body-centered cubic (BCC) architecture was higher than that in face-centered cubic (FCC) architecture. Additionally, the orientation of chained LM droplets against the stretching direction greatly affects the resistance variation, and the simulated network morphology can better replicate the experimental results.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from YPJ upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (NS2022012)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Aerospace Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 210016, Jiangsu, China

    Yunpeng Jiang & Yan Zhu

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  1. Yunpeng Jiang
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  2. Yan Zhu
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Correspondence to Yunpeng Jiang.

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Appendix

Appendix

Modeling of critical pressure in mechanical sintering

See Figs. 5

Fig. 5
figure 5

Unit cell of LMEC.

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,

Fig. 6
figure 6

The critical pressure to be determined by the divergence between the pressure-stretch ratio curves and the associated rupture contour of LM droplets. Here, the pressure-stretch ratio curve with damage criterion deviates from that with no damage effect at a critical point, whereby the corresponding pressure at this point was assigned as the minimum pressure to break LM droplets.

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6,

Fig. 7
figure 7

Three models with varied orientation angles, where VP = 13.8%, L is the cell model length with L = 100 nm, dLM is LM droplet diameter dLM = 42 nm, and t denotes Ga2O3 layer thickness with t = 3 nm.

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7 and

Fig. 8
figure 8

Dependence of critical pressure on the elastomer stiffness, and the red line is added just for guided reading.

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8

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Jiang, Y., Zhu, Y. Numerical Investigation on the Piezo-Resistive Effect of Ga-Based Liquid Metal Filled Elastomers. J. Electron. Mater. 53, 499–507 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-023-10792-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-023-10792-1

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