Liquid-Metal Microdroplets Formed Dynamically with Electrical Control of Size and Rate

Shi-Yang Tang; Ishan D Joshipura; Yiliang Lin; Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh; Arnan Mitchell; Khashayar Khoshmanesh; Michael D Dickey

doi:10.1002/adma.201503875

Liquid-Metal Microdroplets Formed Dynamically with Electrical Control of Size and Rate

Adv Mater. 2016 Jan 27;28(4):604-9. doi: 10.1002/adma.201503875. Epub 2015 Nov 25.

Authors

Shi-Yang Tang¹, Ishan D Joshipura², Yiliang Lin², Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh¹, Arnan Mitchell¹, Khashayar Khoshmanesh¹, Michael D Dickey²

Affiliations

¹ School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia.
² Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.

PMID: 26601792
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201503875

Abstract

Liquid metal co-injected with electrolyte through a microfluidic flow-focusing orifice forms droplets with diameters and production frequencies controlled in real time by voltage. Applying voltage to the liquid metal controls the interfacial tension via a combination of electrochemistry and electrocapillarity. This simple and effective method can instantaneously tune the size of the microdroplets, which has applications in composites, catalysts, and microsystems.

Keywords: electrocapillarity; flow-focusing; liquid metals; microdroplets; soft electronics.