Conductive and stretchable fibers are the cornerstone of intelligent textiles and imperceptible electronics. Among existing fiber conductors, gallium-based liquid metals (LMs) featuring high conductivity, fluidity, and self-healing are excellent candidates for highly stretchable fibers with sensing, actuation, power generation, and interconnection functionalities. However, current LM fibers fabricated by direct injection or surface coating have a limitation in shape programmability. This hinders their applications in functional fibers with tunable electromechanical response and miniaturization. Here, we reported a simple and efficient method to create shape-programmable LM fibers using the phase transition of gallium. Gallium metal wires in the solid state can be easily shaped into a 3D helical structure, and the structure can be preserved after coating the wire with polyurethane and liquifying the metal. The 3D helical LM fiber offered enhanced stretchability with a high breaking strain of 1273% and showed invariable conductance over 283% strain. Moreover, we can reduce the fiber diameter by stretching the fiber during the solidification of polyurethane. We also demonstrated applications of the programmed fibers in self-powered strain sensing, heart rate monitoring, airflow, and humidity sensing. This work provided simple and facile ways toward functional LM fibers, which may facilitate the broad applications of LM fibers in e-skins, wearable computation, soft robots, and smart fabrics.
Keywords: conductive fiber; flexible electronics; liquid metal; stretchable electrodes; wearable sensors.