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.

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
06 May 2025
Accepted
28 Jul 2025
First published
29 Jul 2025

J. Mater. Chem. C, 2025, Accepted Manuscript

Mechanically Robust Liquid Metal Fibers with Strain-Insensitive Conductivity

S. Hou, H. Zhao, Q. Xu, D. Liu, G. Jin, Y. Xu, J. Wang, M. Kuang and X. Zhang, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2025, Accepted Manuscript , DOI: 10.1039/D5TC01818H

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