Self-Growing and Serpentine Locomotion of Liquid Metal Induced by Copper Ions

Sen Chen; Xiaohu Yang; Yuntao Cui; Jing Liu

doi:10.1021/acsami.8b07649

Self-Growing and Serpentine Locomotion of Liquid Metal Induced by Copper Ions

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2018 Jul 11;10(27):22889-22895. doi: 10.1021/acsami.8b07649. Epub 2018 Jun 26.

Authors

Sen Chen^{1

2}, Xiaohu Yang^{1

2}, Yuntao Cui¹, Jing Liu^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190 , China.
² School of Future Technology , University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100049 , China.
³ Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine , Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084 , China.

PMID: 29932328
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b07649

Abstract

The realization of serpentine locomotion has been a core goal pursued. Here, a straightforward approach was discovered to generate the serpentine locomotion based on a brand-new phenomenon observed on liquid metal (Ga₆₇In₂₁Sn₁₂). The dynamic process that liquid metal can automatically produce and move like tremendous slim snakes was revealed and the underlying mechanisms were clarified and interpreted. It was found that the self-growing serpentine locomotion of liquid metal is driven by the localized surface pressure difference related to the unbalanced surface tension. The present work offers new insight and forms in developing future autonomous soft systems and bionic multifunctional robots.

Keywords: bionics soft robots; discretization effect; interface phenomenon; liquid metal; serpentine locomotion; smart materials.