Recent Development of Liquid Metal-Based Functional Materials Combined with Common Transition Metals

Gallium-based liquid metals (LMs) are a group of metal materials that are in liquid state at room temperature. Their unique physiochemical properties such as fluidity, conductivity, and interfacial properties with other materials have presented great potentials and wide applications. Specifically, the interactions between gallium-based LMs and some common but important transition metals (TMs) have not only enabled a series of intriguing phenomena but also provided valuable strategies or functional materials in soft robotics, devices, flexible electronics, addictive manufacturing, biomedical engineering and therapies, and other fields. The chemical mechanisms including the galvanic corrosion, infiltration, intermetallic compound formation should play vital roles within these interactions. Hereby the combining the LMs and TMs by alloying or physically mixing may offer a platform to develop novel and multifunctional materials system. To acquire a comprehensive understanding of those interactions as well as to inspire the researches for multifunctional materials design and applications, this article reviews the researches on the combination of LMs and TMs, discusses the characteristics, the mechanisms, and their applications especially in electronics, smart materials, and biomedicine. The main challenges and future research outlook are also discussed.