Environment-Friendly Liquid Metal Coating Material for Patterning Soft and Stretchable Electronics at Low Cost

Wearable flexible electronics can enrich and facilitate people's daily life. However, although exquisite design and complex processes enrich the functions of wearable electronics, high costs also hinder the commercialization of wearable flexible electronics and their applications in everyday life. Herein, we report a low-cost and rapid fabrication approach for wearable flexible electronics. In this approach, liquid metal coating material composed of liquid metal particles and polyvinyl alcohol solution can be mask coated on some substrate materials commonly used in daily life to fabricate desired soft and stretchable patterns for wearable electronics. Further, we characterized the electrical performance of liquid metal coating material for strain sensors, and fabricated soft LED arrays and finger joint motion sensors on disposable nitrile gloves commonly used in the laboratory to demonstrate that this approach is fully capable of manufacturing low-cost disposable wearable electronics. This approach sheds new light on wearable electronics in high demand for short-lived everyday use.