Rheological conductor from liquid metal-polymer composites

Summary

Advanced conductors are indispensable circuit elements in modern electronics with unique responses to environmental variations. This work successfully introduces the intriguing polymer relaxation into conductive materials and creates a special rheological conductor (RhC) from liquid metal (LM)-polymer composites. The electrical transition temperatures of RhC are found to be highly consistent with polymer rheological transition temperatures (T_g and T_f). Similar to the time-temperature superposition of polymers, a master curve can be constructed to effectively predict the conductivity of RhC. Further polymer rheological experiments and theoretical analysis successfully demonstrate the relationship between conductance and polymer chain relaxation. The RhC could realize several orders of magnitude change in resistance via temperature/time regulation. The polymer chain dynamics provide multiple resistive responses of RhC to temperature, time, and voltage that are remarkably different from traditional conductors. This work pioneers a new route to re-consider flexible conductors and provides diverse applications in high-tech devices.