Liquid Metal Composites for Multifunctional Robotic Materials

Multifunctional soft materials create intriguing opportunities for emerging soft robots and intelligent matter that have the potential to display biological capabilities through material and physical intelligence. However, one of the largest challenges in this area is the robust mechanical and electrical integration across heterogeneous interfaces. In this presentation, I will address this challenge with several recent advances utilizing liquid metal-based composites to enable a spectrum of reversible to permanent attachment and integration with programmable electrical, thermal, and sensing behavior. I will discuss how control over composite microstructure can dramatically tune functional, mechanical, and adhesive properties of these systems. This includes material and fabrication strategies to interface soft functional materials both in-plane and thru-plane for soft and flexible devices. Fundamental adhesion mechanisms will also be highlighted with discussion of design strategies for adhesion performance. These approaches provide model systems to study fundamental material properties while enabling robotic and autonomous materials that tightly integrate multiple robotic capabilities.