Mechanically Robust Liquid Metal Fibers with Strain-Insensitive Conductivity
Abstract
Highly stretchable conductive fibers that maintain electrical conductivity under significant mechanical deformation are critical for advancing applications in intelligent textiles. While gallium-based liquid metal (LM) has been widely utilized to fabricate strain-insensitive conductive fibers due to its fluidity at room temperature, existing LM-based fibers often suffer from insufficient mechanical strength and leakage issues under cyclic deformation. In this study, we address these challenges by integrating conductive TiO₂ (C-TiO₂) nanorods with fluidic LM to form a hybrid conductive network. The resulting LM/C-TiO₂ composite fibers (LCTFs) exhibit remarkable mechanical robustness, with a breaking strength of approximately 18.2 MPa, an elongation at break exceeding 300%, and sustaining over 10,000 cycles of tensile deformation without LM leakage and conductivity degradation. Notably, the hybrid structure ensures stable electrical performance, with resistance changes limited to only ~3% when stretched to 100% strain. This stability is attributed to the synergistic effects of the fluidic nature of LM and the strain-induced alignment of C-TiO₂ nanorods, which maintain continuous conductive pathways under deformations. Furthermore, the fibers exhibit exceptional durability under diverse mechanical deformations, including bending, twisting, and compressive loading. This work introduces a scalable approach to address the trade-off between conductivity stability and mechanical integrity in LM-based fibers, offering promising opportunities for next-generation wearable electronic textiles.