Fabrication of a thin PDMS film with complex liquid metal electrodes embedded and its application as skin sensors

Zi Ye; Qian Li; Renchang Zhang; Pan Zhang; Lin Gui

doi:10.1039/d1ra09394k

Fabrication of a thin PDMS film with complex liquid metal electrodes embedded and its application as skin sensors

RSC Adv. 2022 Mar 16;12(14):8290-8299. doi: 10.1039/d1ra09394k. eCollection 2022 Mar 15.

Authors

Zi Ye^{1

2}, Qian Li^{1

2}, Renchang Zhang^{1

2}, Pan Zhang^{1

2}, Lin Gui^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Cryogenics, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences 29 Zhongguancun East Road, Haidian District Beijing 100190 China lingui@mail.ipc.ac.cn.
² School of Future Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100039 China.

Abstract

This research work reports an approach for the fabrication of liquid metal patterned thin films. By using this method, very complex liquid metal electrodes can be successfully integrated into a thin PDMS film with a thickness as low as 119 μm. The high resolution of the microelectrode channel is achieved by soft lithography technology. The relatively-thin electrode structure is developed with the assistance of the reversible PC membrane bonding technique that we reported earlier. Femtosecond laser drilling is applied in this work to drill small holes at the channel ends, allowing the air to escape during the filling of liquid metal and making the blind-end liquid metal electrode structure possible. In this work, the fabrication process with some key procedures involved is introduced for developing a microelectrode. Further, a wearable strain sensor is designed with the fabricated microelectrode to show its potential to be used in flexible electronics.