[LIVE] KEYNOTE: Liquid Electronics for Stretchable Conductors | Christopher Tabor, Air Force Research Laboratory

In order to address next-generation requirements for electronic application such as smart wearables, resilient electronics, and reprogrammable hardware, new materials and paradigms for manipulating those materials need to be realized. This talk will focus on one class of emerging materials that has been gaining significant momentum in both the academic and industrial research fields, namely low-temperature gallium-based liquid metal alloys. These materials provide the potential for superior conductivity with the added benefit of the mechanical properties of a liquid. The additional formation of surface oxides on the liquid provides a tunable mechanical film that can lend unprecedented mechanical properties to the liquid. Control of this surface chemically has been a key focus of our research, enabling us to create mechanically tunable microparticles, ultra-stretchable electronics, programmable RF hardware, and self-healing circuits which are being applied towards next-generation applications such as wearable physiological monitors and soft robotics.