Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722

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Applied Materials Today

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Liquid metal enabled injectable biomedical technologies and

applications
Xuyang Sun a, Bo Yuan b, Lei Sheng a, Wei Rao a,∗, Jing Liu a,b,∗
a
Beijing Key Lab of Cryo-Biomedical Engineering and Key Lab of Cryogenics, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing 100190, China
b
Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Liquid metals are arousing increasing interests among many challenging biomedical and healthcare areas,
Received 23 December 2019 owing to their exceptional merits such as outstanding fluidic behavior, excellent electrical and thermal
Revised 10 April 2020
conductivity, tunable mechanical property, high plasticity, low vapor pressure, and favorable biocompat-
Accepted 2 June 2020
ibility. Recent endeavors indicate that liquid metals have quickly become a new generation of functional
biomaterials in both fundamental research and practical applications. Especially, their uniquely low vis-
Keywords: cosity and water-like flowability as metals in liquid state enable many unconventional biomedical opera-
Injectable technology tional modes through the easy-going injection way. This would mold a highly beneficial technology with
Liquid metal numerous advantages distinguishing from those traditional open surgeries. This review is dedicated to
Biomedical technology
systematically draft a new area of liquid metal enabled injectable biomedical technology based on their
Biomaterials
unique characteristics, summarize the recent representative developments and the associated biomedical
progress. The state-of-art materials, technologies, and devices will be interpreted. Scientific opportunities
and challenges will also be discussed. As emerging injectable biomaterials, the fundamentals, technol-
ogy, and potential applications of the liquid metals would endow injectable operations to fulfill urgently
biomedical demand as well as stimulate further endeavors along this critical direction.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Injectable medicine is developing into an interdisciplinary field,
including engineering, materials, biology, and medicine. The appli-
cations of injectable medicine include restoring damaged tissue or
cavities through tissue engineering scaffolds and precise delivery
drugs or energy to specific defect site [1]. Unlike traditional open
surgery, the injectable method benefits greatly from injectable ma-
terials with minimal invasiveness, reduced possibility of infection,
easy operation, low cost and short recovery time [2]. At present,
injectable tissue engineering strategy has been considered as an
attractive alternative to reduce bacterial contamination of surgery
and come into a myriad of applications in complex tissue regen-
eration, such as maxillofacial reconstruction, cardiovascular tissue
regeneration and joint arthroplasty [3-5].
Generally, injectable materials should meet several basic re-
quirements, like biocompatibility, biodegradability, less or nontox-
∗
Corresponding authors. Beijing Key Lab of Cryo-Biomedical Engineering and Key
Lab of Cryogenics, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
E-mail addresses: weirao@mail.ipc.ac.cn (W. Rao), jliu@mail.ipc.ac.cn (J. Liu).
icity, and proper mobility to fulfill injection [6, 7]. In addition to
the above characteristics, much attention of implantable biomateri-
als is focused on the comparable property, either soft or hard, with
suitable mechanical support to maintain the tissue microenviron-
ment [8]. The function of injectable materials is not only to substi-
tute the irregular defects but also to offer sustained 3D structural
support and repair capability [9]. In structure, ideal restoring ma-
terials should enable remodeling capacity, the so-called transfor-
mation adapted to external circumstance, and appropriate degrad-
able ability while transporting supporting nutrition, such as drugs,
bioactive factors and even various stem cells [10, 11]. Clinically,
injectable biomedical materials are used in tissue engineering for
trauma and a variety of complex tissue repairs, such as heart, bone,
cartilage, and vessels, and in disease treatment like analgesic ther-
apy and tumor therapy [12, 13]. Till now, different kinds of nature-
derived and artificial materials, including autologous tissues, allo-
geneic biological tissues, decellularized matrices, polymers, ceram-
ics, stimuli-response hydrogels and nanomaterials are used as in-
jectable biomaterials for tissue restoration [12, 14, 15]. Especially,
hydrogel-based biomaterials are a wide range of injectable materi-
als that could respond to external environments, such as pH, tem-
perature, light, electric and magnetic fields [16, 17].

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmt.2020.100722
2352-9407/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
Besides providing mechanical support or chemical drugs to ac-
complish tissue regeneration, part of the injectable materials are
enabled with electroconductivity, which is also called injectable
electronics [18]. Injectable electronics focus more on the electri-
cal energy delivery and in vivo electric signal collection. In partic-
ular, injectable electronics was selected as one of the ten world-
changing ideas in 2015. As is well known, electrical activity is the
principal signal that governs human behavior, such as hormone se-
cretion, muscle contraction, learning and memory capacity of the
brain. In order to achieve a better understanding of the basic ner-
vous activity of organism through electric signal, as well as to reg-
ulate and promote the function of neurons, artificial electrodes are
usually attached to the surface or implanted in vivo to monitor or
transport electrical activity, in which several commercialized wear-
able electronic and small-sized implantable devices are commonly
utilized in clinics, like wearable ECG signal detection, cardiac pace-
maker and implanted electrically stimulated probes for treating
Parkinson’s disease [19, 20].
Nevertheless, to reduce the intrinsic difference between biolog-
ical tissue and artificial electronic devices is the most challenging
part and holds a great space to improve. In order to reduce the
mismatch between the tissue and implantable electronics and in-
crease the stability on the contact interface, a continuous endeavor
has been made on the discovery of suitable implanted materi-
als, novel technology and advanced integrated equipment [21]. Re-
cently, conductive hydrogels have attracted great attention for their
conductive ability and flexibility to smooth the interface between
humans and machines, which includes ionically conductive hydro-
gels, conductive nanocomposite hydrogels, and conductive polymer
hydrogels [22, 23]. Unlike traditional rigid electronics, these hy-
drogels are not only electrically conductive and flexible but also
enable delivery through a syringe. Besides hydrogels, Lieber et al.
also reported large-scale porous mesh conductive material made of
polymer and encapsulated metal as interconnects with submicron
thickness. This conductive composition can be injected into defects
or biological tissues, inducing little immune activity and has been
applied to obtain the stable electrophysiological signal from the
retina in awake mice [24, 25].
To improve electric conductivity, hydrogels usually mix with
other conductive materials such as ionic liquids or carbon nanoma-
terials. However, the electroconductivity of these mixtures is rela-
tively low compared to that of metal materials. Thus, a class of
metals with low melting points and favorable flowability attracts
increasing interest. Recently, liquid metals played critical roles in
a number of fields, such as soft machine [26], printing electron-
ics [27-29], hydrogen-producing energy [30-32], human-machine
interface [33], and biomedicine [34], which are inseparable from
a series of special uniqueness, including physical, chemical and
biological characteristics. Actually, because of the toxicity or ra-
dioactivity of several types of liquid metals, such as mercury, ru-
bidium, cesium, francium, only sodium-potassium (NaK) alloy, liq-
uid gallium (Ga), gallium and bismuth (Bi) alloy have been at-
tempted to be utilized in the biomedical applications, including
liquid metal bath electrode-mediated radiofrequency ablation [35],
skin-attachable wireless sensors for physiological signal detection
[36] and enhanced tumor thermochemical ablation [37, 38].
Room temperature gallium-based liquid metals with flowabil-
ity and tunable melting points through forming an alloy with one
or more metals of bismuth, indium (In), tin (Sn), lead (Pb), cad-
mium (Cd) etc., display promising potential and hold great value
in biomedical fields. At the same time, the combination of low vis-
cosity, fluidity, and biocompatibility endows these metals’ ability
as injectable biomaterials that can be operated through syringes,
which enables completely filling into the known or most unknown
irregular defects and precise delivery of materials, drugs and elec-
tric energy. Through injection, liquid metal-enabled biomaterials
would unveil plenty of game-changing applications, providing con-
trollable mechanical support with a lower Young’s modulus to the
rigid metal counterparts that is comparable to the human tissue
and several orders higher electric conductivity than those conduc-
tive hydrogels.
After injection, long-term monitoring and observation on the
shapes of biomaterials in vivo, which facilitate our understand-
ing of the interaction between the implants and their surround-
ing tissues, remains a huge challenge in tissue engineering. Liq-
uid metals with high image contrast under X-ray endow them
the ability to directly observe their behavior after implanted into
the deep tissue, especially the inner three-dimensional structure,
which is almost impossible for fluorescent imaging due to the pen-
etrate depth limitation [39]. Thus low-melting liquid metal would
furnish an unconventional injectable technology to address many
complex medical challenges, allowing sophisticated tissue regen-
eration, comprehensive in vivo surveillance of implanted biomate-
rials, collecting bioelectrical signal and regulating neural activity,
and thus build up an injectable medicine for the biomedical sys-
tem, ranging from mechanical support in tissue reconstruction to
monitoring and therapeutic interventions of diseases.
The combination of a number of extraordinary merits of liq-
uid metals (Fig. 1a), including flowability, plasticity, imaging con-
trast enhancer, biosafety and biodegradability, electric and mag-
netic properties, enables them to offer pathbreaking ways to tackle
many challenging medical puzzles. Moreover, the chemical activ-
ity and stability, the natural flexibility and variable mechanical
strength empowered by the oxide layer of liquid metal is a double-
edged sword, carrying pros and cons on many issues.
This review is dedicated to systematically daft a liquid metal-
enabled injectable medical system based on understanding the
physical, chemical, biological characteristics of liquid metal, and fo-
cuses on the typical applications (Fig. 1b) and applied technologies
of injectable biotechnology. Liquid metals of NaK alloy, gallium-
based alloy, bismuth-based alloy, and gallium-based nanomaterials
are all included as injectable biomaterials in this review, which are
summarized in Table 1. We will start with a brief overview of the
fundamental characteristics of these liquid metals to provide evi-
dence as injectable biomaterials. Subsequently, the recent advances
of the injection-enabled applications will be introduced. Addition-
ally, the devices supporting the injection technology and the in-
jectable targets will be described. Last but not least, discussions on
the opportunities and challenges are outlined.
2. Characteristics of liquid metals
This section focuses on several essential features of liquid met-
als that enable injection technology as well as facilitate their
subsequent applications in biomedical areas, including fabrication
methods of liquid metal droplets for microfluidic devices, imag-
ing enhancer agency, electric signal connection and delivery, tu-
mor therapies, smart robots, and other nanoparticles enabled ap-
plications in diagnosis and treatments. The characteristics of liq-
uid metal as unique biomaterials are summarized and classified
into eight aspects, such as injectability, self-driven mobility, elec-
trical conductivity, plasticity, transformability, biocompatibility and
degradability, magnetic property and thermal conductivity for fur-
ther development in a combination of their diverse functionality
into specific applications. The basic physic properties of typical liq-
uid metals are summarized in Table 2.
2.1. Injectability
Usually, injectable materials are supposed to meet two charac-
teristics, fluidity and moderate viscosity. For low-melting metals,
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722 3

Fig. 1. (a) The diverse properties of low melting point liquid metal: injectable feature (liquid metal is conformably filled into irregular intestinal tract [40]), self-driven
mobility (an EGaIn droplet moves in a circular channel [41]), electric property (liquid metal electrodes facilitate the transmission of nerve signals [42]), high plasticity
(the alloy cement is formed in a shape of“BONE” [43]), transformability (shape transformation of a liquid metal droplet under 20 V voltage [44]), biocompatibility and
biodegradable (Liquid metal hybrid materials injected into tumor sites [45]), magnetic property (Liquid metal is placed on a permanent magnet [46]) and thermal property
(liquid metal nanorods produce a large amount of heat under laser irradiation [37]). Reproduced with permission. (b) Injectable liquid metal enabled a series of biomedical
applications.

Table 1
Basic properties of typical injectable liquid metals.

Types Composition Size Ref.

Gallium-based liquid metals Gallium/EGaIn24.5 / Ga67 In20.5 Sn12.5 alloy/ Mg-GaIn mixture/Ga-In-Al mixture/ Liquid Bulk [41, 43, 45, 47-49]
metal hybrid
Alginate modified Ga-In-Al/Nickel cap modified Ga-In-Al/ Liquid metal conjugates Millimeter [50]
droplet
Liquid metal droplets Micro/nanoscale [51, 52]
EGaIn24.5 nanocapsules/ Gallium nanospheres/ Gallium nanorods ~100–300 nm [37, 53, 54]
Bismuth-based liquid metals Bi35 In48.6 Sn16 Zn0.4 alloy Bulk [43]
Sodium-potassium alloys NaK alloy Bulk [55]

Table 2
Physical properties of typical liquid metals [56, 91].

Gallium GaIn24.5 Ga67 In20.5 Sn12.5 Ga61 In25 Sn13 Zn1 Bi35 In48.6 Sn16 Zn0.4

Melting point (°C) 29.8 15.5 10.5 7.6 58.3

Viscosity (mPa•s) 1.75 2.7 2.98 0.71 4
Surface tension (mN m−1 ) 0.72 0.624 0.533 0.5 —
Electrical conductivity (106 S m-1 ) 3.7 3.4 3.1 2.8 7.3
Thermal conductivity (W m−1 K−1 ) 29.4 42.2 16.5 48.2 10.9

including NaK alloy, gallium-based, and bismuth-based liquid met-
als present liquid state when the temperature is above their melt-
ing points. The dynamic viscosity of gallium is about 1.75 mPa s,
which is slightly higher than that of water (1.002 mPa s) [56]. Re-
searchers recorded the splashing process of liquid metal from a
certain height using a high-speed digital camera, displaying sim-
ilar fluid properties with water (Fig. 2a) [57]. In practice, syringe
injection provides an easy way to perform and form small-sized
droplets or a puddle of liquid metal. In addition, flexibility enables
the liquid metal to be shapes or filled into unknown cavities in any
shape. Because the viscosity of the liquid metal is similar to that
of the water, when filling into the biological tissue, the material
would conformably be attached to the tissues.
The surface tension of Galinstan is about 534.6 mN m−1 , which
is more than 7 times higher than that of water (70 mN m−1 ), with
a tendency to shrink into a droplet in the aqueous solution to re-
duce the surface energy [58, 59]. When in contact with air or oxy-
gen, an oxide skin will form on the surface of liquid metal with a
thickness of about 3 nm, which is composed of the surface Ga2 O3
and Ga2 O [60]. Compared to gallium, indium and tin are not easy
to react with oxygen in the open air. The generated oxide film pre-
vents the internal metal from further oxidation. However, continu-
ous stirring in the air would facilitate the whole oxidation process.
Studies have shown that the viscosity of Galinstan would increase
with the thickness of the oxide film [60]. Thus through manipula-
tions of the oxides on the outside could probably be a way to tune
the viscosity of liquid metals.
Considering the high surface tension of liquid metal, it is hard
to mix it with other particles. However, the existence of oxide skin
on the surface would act as a bridge and facilitate the mixture with
copper particles, nickel particles, and iron particles [61-65]. The
accumulation of the oxide contents during the stirring and mix-
ing process increases the viscosity and the adhesive behavior to
a different surface, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), paper, poly-
4 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722

Fig. 2. Characteristics of smart injectable liquid metals. (a) The fluidic features of liquid metal compared with water. Reproduced with permission [57]. (b) The liquid metal-
based material as an electronic tattoo for human-machine interaction [92]. Reproduced with permission. (c) Tunable rigidity, conductivities, adhesion, and formability of
liquid metal mixture with additive copper particles and the element mapping of the mixture. Reproduced with permission [70]. (d) The light transmittance change of liquid
metal nanoparticles over time (left) and the corresponding TEM images of the liquid metal nanoparticles in acidic PBS solution (pH=5.0). Scale bars, 100 nm (for 5 min);
100 nm (for 1 h); 100 nm (for 4 h); 400 nm (for 72 h). Reproduced with permission [52]. (e) The thermographic images of a representative liquid metal droplet with or
without a 785 nm laser irradiation (left) and 100 μg ml−1 modified liquid metal nanoparticles solution under laser irradiation. Reproduced with permission [53].

dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and polymethacrylate (PMA) glue, which
is widely used in flexible electronics, electric skin and transfer
printing technology [66-69]. Especially, when liquid metal with a
high packing rate of about 20% copper particles by weight, the
rigidity increases, exhibiting a clear solid-like behavior. This me-
chanically regulated property would be advantageous as stiffness
variable materials in the soft robotic areas and accomplish a series
of actions like grasp-and-release, cargo delivery, active protection
and support. Moreover, a small amount of copper particles dop-
ing would not only influence the fluidity of liquid metal but also
enhance the electric and thermal conductivity of the mixture [70,
71].
Liquid metal combined with other elastomers, such as silicones,
also attracts great attention, especially in flexible and wearable
electronics with superior compressing, twisting and stretchable ca-
pability in arbitrary shapes [72-80]. Considering the superior soft-
ness and fluidity, researchers injected liquid metal directly or un-
der pressure into microchannel made by triblock copolymer gels,
PDMS and the other elastomeric surfaces to fabricate microchan-
nel electrodes, flexible antennas and retractable electronics [81-
83]. These materials are shown with soft properties from the inner
core consisted of liquid metals as well as the outside elastomers.
These outside elastomers can also work as potential packaging ma-
terials to assure the biosafety regarding the further use of metals
in the body.
In a microfluidic system, liquid metal enables the one-step in-
jection instead of the sophisticated patterning technology in the
fabrication of electrodes, which also provides a novel method of
pumping and valves control [84]. This liquid metal-based electrode
was used as a sensor to obtain the changes in temperature, humid-
ity, and oxygen in stretchable channels, which was demonstrated
with a higher sensibility [85]. Instead of direct injection of liquid
metal to form electrodes in situ, several liquid metal microdroplets
with stable sphericity could be prepared in advance, taking advan-
tage of the mechanical strength supported by the oxide surface,
and injected to form microelectrodes under dielectrophoretic as-
sembly [86]. Therefore, the fabrication methods of uniform shapes
of liquid metal droplets are needed to work as electrodes in mi-
crofluidic devices.
Gallium is easy to alloy with several other metals, including
Bi, In, Sn, Pb, Cd, etc., with tunable melting points through in-
corporating different compositions and proportions [87]. Gener-
ally, gallium-based liquid metals present with melting points lower
than the room temperature. For example, the melting points of
GaIn24.5 and Ga67 In20.5 Sn12.5 are 15.5 °C and 10.5 °C, respectively.
In several cases, the implanted biomaterials need to satisfy a cer-
tain extent of mechanical strength to fill in the cavity and facilitate
the tissue with stiffness to remodeling. Of course, incorporating
other particles could enhance their mechanical strength. However,
the injectable features of the metal mixture would be damaged to
a certain extent. Actually, bismuth, which is similar with gallium, is
easy to alloy with In, Sn, Zn to form low-melting alloys possessed
with higher melting points than gallium-based liquid metals, and
displays important application in the reversible stiffness and self-
healing composite materials [88]. For example, Bi35 In48.6 Sn16 Zn0.4
alloy with a higher melting point of 57.5 °C, presents the solid-
state in ambient temperature as well as body temperature and
exhibits flowability after short-time heating [43]. Researchers in-
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
dicated that the mechanical properties of Bi35 In48.6 Sn16 Zn0.4 alloy
with a compressive strength of 37.6 ± 1.56 MPa, bending stress of
35.31 ± 1.09 MPa and a bending modulus of 6.41 ± 0.81 GPa, was
able to resist the external pressure. After melting on a small heater,
the Bi35 In48.6 Sn16 Zn0.4 alloy could inhale with a needle and pro-
ceed through a syringe to the bone. Then the injected low-melting
alloy filled in the irregular defect, solidified and provided more
suitable sustainability. Finally, the removal of the alloy could be
done by reheating and extracting with a syringe via a non-invasive
way. Besides the direct contact of metals to human tissues, the use
of several packaging materials could further enhance the biosafety
of these liquid metal alloys.
Generally, the viscosity and mechanical strength of liquid met-
als can be regulated through oxide skin, extra metal particles ad-
dition or the choice of bismuth-based alloy metals, which was
mainly owing to the unique physical and chemical properties of
liquid metals. Therefore, guided with the chemical peculiarity of
liquid metals, more fundamental phenomena would thus be dis-
covered and turned into practical use.
2.2. Self-driven mobility
Micro/nanorobots with self-motion property open up novel
paths in many fields such as cargo transportation, drug delivery,
intelligent sensor and information transmission, etc. Because of the
small size, those micro/nanomachines mainly rely on external en-
ergy when executing tasks under specific situations in aqueous or
non-aqueous environments where the energy powered system is
relatively easy to operate outside. While in the macroscopic di-
mensions, mainly ranging from millimeter to centimeter scale, re-
searches concerning the self-propelled machines have encountered
enormous challenges. The driving force of those robots usually in-
volves complex and extensive system of energy sources, especially
in case of a long-distance and a wide range. Although the electric
field and the magnetic field are absolutely the preferred choice due
to the precise control technology, this poses significant challenges
of materials as well as equipment. If the energy source could be
combined with the machine, the problem would then be simpli-
fied to the battery energy efficiency and the integration issues. The
smaller size, lighter weight and higher energy supply capacity is
highly pursued on the requirements of the battery. While when
combining the battery and the moving body, the direct interactions
might damage the regular operation of the two isolated systems.
So it is very important to improve the interaction effect between
the power system and the flexible machines at the same time to
ensure the overall safety and performance. It is of great meanings
to learn from the natural organisms. They eat, digest, absorb food
and then convert it into ATP and the diving forces.
Under an unanticipated discovery, Zhang et al. had observed the
self-driven motion phenomenon of liquid metal droplets after en-
gulfing a small amount of aluminum. The penetrating of aluminum
to the liquid metal alloy enables the autonomous locomotion and
maintains the original soft nature to pass through the U-shaped
and zigzag channel [41], which was considered as the first-ever
whole soft metallic robot, not only exhibiting its transformable
uniqueness but also demonstrating a next-generation robot model
with potential capability to accomplish complex missions through
slits.
What’s more, after injection, the large robot of running liquid
metal could be divided into tremendous discrete droplet machines,
then bouncing and combining together into a large one without
sacrificing the mobility [89]. Especially after dividing, the rear of
each machine with individual motor capability could continuously
release bubbles and power the locomotion behavior in its origi-
nal track [26]. When dispersing three motors in the torus groove,
their speeds could be in synchrony at first. The reason was that
5
the flow of solution in the channel would form a certain resistance
as the feedback effect to the moving motor. While for such a pur-
suit problem, the fast-moving machine was still likely to catch up
with the low moving machine, causing collision and fusion. Finally,
the merged large machine could seamlessly connect and continue
to move forward. However, the large machine after collision and
fusion would have higher kinetic energy and velocity due to the
reduction of the surface free energy.
However, this self-powered machine has to work in an aqueous
solution due to the fact that the driving mechanism is originated
from chemical interaction between the mixtures and ions in the
water, which might restrict its applications. Our digestive and cir-
culatory systems are essentially enriched with water and can offer
circulation pathways for these machines, leaving a large space to
explore the promise aspects of these soft robots in biomedical ar-
eas, such as drug delivery, disease monitor and sample collections
[90]. Through incorporation with other metals, liquid metals are
discovered with enhanced characteristics and even unusual abili-
ties without sacrificing their soft nature. Studies are encouraged to
explore more exciting phenomena and fundamental behaviors of
liquid metals in this way.
2.3. Electric property
Hydrogels attract great attention as injectable biomaterials due
to their outstanding biocompatibility to the tissue interface [22].
Through incorporating other nanocomposites or highly conductive
metal nanomaterials, hydrogels are endowed with electrical con-
ductivity capability. However, the highest electrical conductivity of
the conductive hydrogels is about 103 S m−1 , which is still much
lower than that of metals [22]. Generally, metals are widely used
in electronic circuits for their excellent electrical conductivity. The
electrical conductivity of the liquid metal, which resembles but
is slightly lower than steel (6.21 × 106 S m−1 ), is several orders
of magnitude higher than those non-metal counterparts, such as
carbon-based materials, conductive grease, conductive ionic liq-
uid or hydrogels [91]. For example, the electrical conductivity of
GaIn24.5 , Ga67 In20.5 Sn12.5 , Ga61 In25 Sn13 Zn1 , Bi35 In48.6 Sn16 Zn0.4 are
3.4 × 106 S m−1 , 3.1 × 106 S m−1 , 2.8 × 106 S m−1 , 7.3 × 106
S m−1 , respectively. The differences including but not limited to
electric property between the hydrogel and liquid metal are com-
pared in Table 3.
Moreover, liquid metals are presenting a characteristic with the
tunable electric property through regulation. Firstly, the electrical
resistivity of liquid metal is demonstrated to be correlated with
the degree of oxidation [91]. Alloying with other metals, such as
In, Sn, would improve the electrical properties a bit [91]. Beyond
that, by adding other highly conductive particles into liquid metal
would provide a way to enhance its electrical characteristics. In
particular, the softness of the materials is shown without sacri-
ficing. Researchers have shown that liquid metal-based skin tattoo
was able to display diverse flexibility, such as bending, twisting,
bending and relaxing for 30 0 0 cycles and at the same time main-
tain excellent electric properties (Fig. 2b) [92]. After injection into
a hollow elastomeric fiber, the researchers have shown that the
conductive wire maintained good conductivity under stretching up
to 700% [93].
Composites combining liquid metals with other elastomers pro-
vide a method to prepare materials with the reversible electri-
cal transition. Despite the excellent electric conductivity of bulk
liquid metals, the conductive of dispersed liquid metal droplets
in solutions or elastomers would be significantly decreased. Re-
cently, Wang et al. proposed a liquid metal-polymer composites
with both outstanding stretchable characteristic and free reversibil-
ity between conductor and insulator as novel transitional insulator
and conductor (TIC) materials [94]. After freezing for only a few
6 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
Table 3
Comparison between LM and hydrogel.
Hydrogel
Typical source Agarose, alginate, hyaluronic acid, collagen, chitosan,
PEG, PVA, PLA, PLGA
Mechanical property Young’s modulus (~10−1 -~103 kPa)
Electrical property Through incorporating other conductive materials
such as metal, carbon nanotubes, graphene, ionic
salts etc. (~ 10−3 –103 S m − 1 )
Stimulus response pH, temperature, light, electric, chemical materials
(such as glucose, enzyme)
Imaging Through incorporating other imaging contrast agent
Biocompatibility Excellent
Degradability Degrade into harmless organics
Shape transformation Mainly volume change or some with shape memory
function
Fabrication process Relatively hard to handle
Fabrication into different scales From bulk to nanoscale particles with relatively
uniform distribution
seconds, the resistance could change by 4 × 109 times. The liquid
metal droplets would go through phase changes, thus increasing
the volume. While the surrounding polymers would undergo vit-
rification with stiffness change during the temperature drop. The
two factors induced those isolated liquid metal droplets to connect
with each other at low temperature and made the complex ap-
pear as a conductor. The more interesting phenomenon was that
the process was reversible. That is to say, the elastomer compos-
ites could return to normal isolator state after heating. After 100
times cycles, the composites could maintain stable structures as
well as reversibly electrical conductivity. Several influential factors
such as the dispersed state of the droplets inside the elastomer,
particle sizes, the state of the polymers, the viscosity, curing time,
that could made an impact on the conductivity change were also
analyzed. This kind of TIC materials would have significance as
novel temperature switches, temperature-sensitive circuits and sta-
ble maintenance of circuit state in an extreme environment. Fur-
ther, Chen et al. discovered a class of temperature-regulated liquid
conductor-insulator transition (LCIT) composites and summarized
a generalized role [95]. Dispersing liquid metal droplets in silicone
oil (dimethicone) acted as a simple method to realize conductive
switching for hundreds of times. The important meaning of this
work is to summarize a class of metal materials with the abnor-
mal volume change, which are mainly gallium-based or bismuth-
based materials. The low temperature could induce volume expan-
sion of the metals to facilitate the contact of these droplets into
bulk-like conductor in the electronic circuit. When the temperature
rises, the droplets of liquid metal would undergo volume shrinking
into the original isolated state with low conductivity. In addition,
the researchers also revealed the color change phenomenon of the
liquid composite during the serve temperature change, which can
be used as an indicator of the conductivity.
2.4. High plasticity
Liquid metal could act as 3D printing ink to directly fabricate
several fixed models [96, 97]. Besides, uniform micro-sized liq-
uid metal droplets could thus be fabricated via filling into uni-
formly shaped fixed molds with hydrochloric acid to overcome the
high surface tension and remove the outside oxide skin [98]. For
bismuth-based alloys, due to the higher melting points, they ap-
pear as solid at room temperature. Taking advantage of liquid-solid
transition, they can be filled into the unknown 3D structures after
heating and solidification in the cold air to make desired shapes.
LM Ref.
Ga, Bi, In, Sn, Zn [13, 87]
Tunable elastic modulus depending on liquid [22, 88]
or solid state (0-~10 GPa)
High electrical conductivity [22, 102]
(~ 1 × 106 -8 × 106 S m − 1 )
Light, heat, acid [6, 34]
High radiopaque [48, 103]
Good [13, 34]
Under mild acidic environment, gallium turns [34, 52]
into Ga3+
Ranging from macroscale to nanoscale [103-105]
Relatively easy either preparing alloys or [13, 34]
synthesis nanoparticles
From bulk to nanoscale particles with [34]
non-uniform distribution
In this process, temperature control is critical, while high heating
temperature would increase the complexity of the operation. How-
ever, if the heating temperature is too low, the materials would
solidify during the shaping process. Therefore, a precise temper-
ature controller has to be utilized to maintain the constant tem-
perature of the materials. With the device, researchers demon-
strated that liquid phase 3D printing technology with liquid metal
Bi35 In48.6 Sn15.9 Zn0.4 alloy ink successfully fabricated a diversity of
3D structures, including balls, rods, frustum of a cone and cylinder
[99]. Further, through mixing with copper nanoparticles, the plas-
ticity of liquid metals could be enhanced primarily (Fig. 2c) [70].
In particular, liquid metals exhibit distinct elastic modes at
various temperature ranges. For example, due to the high melt-
ing point of Bi–In–Sn alloy, the elastic modulus is extremely high
(9.25 GPa) above 62 °C, while the elastic modulus can drop to
almost zero after melting [88]. Taking advantage of this feature,
combining liquid metals with other low elastomers such as silica
gel with an elastic modulus of 0.54 MPa provided a method of fab-
ricating stiffness tunable multifunctional elastomer foams [88]. At
room temperature, the as-made foam could bear a load of 0.5 kg.
With the temperature increasing, the liquid metals inside the elas-
tomer composites would melt but still adhere to the inner silicon
due to the role of oxide. Besides, the elastomer exhibited excellent
mechanical properties including all kinds of stretching and defor-
mation. At room temperature, the elastomer modulus was 1.8 MPa
and 3.1 MPa in the tensile and compression tests. While the elas-
tomer modulus would decrease to 0.1 MPa after heating. When
the foam composite was further encapsulated and molded, it could
form an endoskeleton structure. Covered on the surface of a pneu-
matic arm, it acted as an exoskeleton structure with flexible tun-
ing capability. Thanks to the favorable fluidity, after cutting, liquid
metal could flow and fill into the gaps under high temperature to
reconnect the broken part into a complete elastomer. Although the
cutting damage of silicone elastomer is irreversible, the fluidity of
liquid metals plays an important role as self-healing and repairing
materials. In another study, the authors prepared composite ma-
terials with several layers to actively regulate the rigidity of the
materials, including a serpentine structured liquid metal layer, an
electric Joule heater layer and the encapsulation layer [100]. It is
reported that the effective elastic modulus of the composite could
be electrically modulated with a change of four orders of magni-
tude. At room temperature, the complex was rigid and the mod-
ulus of elasticity was dominated by the metal materials. While
with the power on, the inner metals melted and the elastic mod-
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
ulus was affected by the acrylic elastomers, so the composite was
free to be bent or distorted. After repeated electronic control, the
composite still remained stable reversibility. In addition, a theoret-
ical model was established to predict the time consumed to acti-
vate the whole elastomer and the relationships between the rigid-
ity change of the whole composite and the input energy, which
was demonstrated to be in good agreement with the experimental
results. After electric activation, the composite was demonstrated
with multifunction, which holds great application promising in the
future.
Besides, Yuan et al. came up with a method to regulate the
stiffness of copper wire mesh by utilizing the wetting behavior be-
tween liquid metals and copper wire mesh [101]. They found that
the rigidness of the composite could be largely enhanced from to-
tally soft to pretty rigid. What’s more, the enhancer could also re-
alize increased load-bearing capability with a multilayer structure
to finally support a heavy load of 2 kg at the same time with a thin
thickness of less than 1 mm. The enhancer also exhibited prospects
in the behaviors like grabbing, releasing and supporting, etc.
2.5. Transformability
For gallium-based liquid metals, a film of gallium oxides can
be formed on the skin, which prevents the inner metal from be-
ing further oxidized. The oxide skin owns a certain rigidity and
can tune and shape the liquid metals, the performance of which is
widely applied in the mold, reconstruction and 3D printing [106].
Because of the existence of the soft core and rigid skin surface, liq-
uid metals can adjust their shapes through tuning the surface ten-
sion and further mediate various types of transformation, including
changing from a puddle of liquid metal film to a single droplet,
from a single droplet to a puddle of liquid metal film, reversible
large-scale deformation of liquid metals, division and fusion of liq-
uid metal motors.
For liquid metals with oxide skin, the morphology changes usu-
ally involve a certain temperature change or external mechanical
forces. Besides, the shapes of liquid metals can also be controlled
by the electrical field [107-109]. Sheng et al. discovered the un-
usual transformable phenomenon of a pool of liquid metal under
external electric field [104]. Their work reported that the surface
area was changed for more than a thousand times from a large film
to a tiny sphere. It was found that the phenomenon of liquid metal
surface change could only happen when the negative electrode was
imposed on the liquid metal film. That is to say, the direction of
the electric field determines whether the liquid metal could shrink
smoothly. When the negative electrode was connected to the sur-
face of liquid metals, a complete electrical circuit was formed to-
gether with the positive electrode, solution and external power
supply. After electrification, a redox reaction would occur. For the
negative electrode, the liquid metal part would be reduced, and the
gallium oxide was constantly being removed. It was also discov-
ered that the oxide skin was preferentially removed near the pos-
itive electrode, where the electric intensity was high. That is the
reason that the shrink of liquid metal film was initiated from the
negative to the positive electrode. Further several influential factors
such as the intensity of electric voltage, charged ions in the solu-
tion, electrode shapes and electrode spacing, which might have an
effect on the dynamic electric controlled removing process in such
as electrical circuit consisting of electrons and ions, were also ana-
lyzed by researchers. In the experiment, since the current intensity
near the negative electrode is larger than that far away from it,
the oxide formation rate near the negative electrode is thus faster
and the surface tension drop is more obvious. So the asymmetric
deformation of the liquid metal machine was observed.
Many experiments were performed with large-scale deforma-
tion taking advantage of this oxide cleanup. The electrochemical
7
method is also used to remove the surface oxide skin. The alu-
minum sheet was adopted to form a primary cell with liquid metal
materials. The liquid metals as the positive electrode would un-
dergo a reduction reaction and the metal oxide could be removed
continuously with the inner alloy being exposed continuously and
the surface tension of the mixture is increased. Then the aluminum
as the negative electrode would be dissolved in the solution and
form aluminum ions. Besides, the chemical reaction is another sim-
ple way to eliminate those oxide materials based on the fact that
the gallium oxide is amphoteric and can be dissolved in both acidic
and alkaline solutions.
On the other hand, applying an electric field to a liquid metal
sphere in NaOH solution induces reversible deformation of liquid
metal from gallium droplet to extended structures with large-scale
transformation. The mechanism was disclosed via the synthetically
chemical-electrical mechanism (SCHEME) [44]. The mechanism un-
derlying these phenomena on the surface tension manipulation
and the control of surface oxide skin was disclosed. The double
electric layer on the surface attracts ions in solution around the
surface and affects the surface energy of liquid metals [110]. This
transformable phenomenon of liquid metals enabled by electric
fields would open an accurate way of regulations in shapes and
provide general applications in biomedicine. However, electric ma-
nipulation is not a non-contact approach, extra electrodes are also
required.
Based on the two phenomena of large-scale transformation of
liquid metals, the reversible amorphous deformation can be eas-
ily achieved with the external signal changed to a square wave
signal to automatically switching the positive and negative poles
[44]. While if the external positive pole is contacted continuously
with the liquid metal film, employment of the chemical solution
through dissolution and controlling the duration of the power can
also achieve the performance of reversible shape transformation.
After the liquid metal droplet is inhaled into the syringe, the
dispersion of liquid metal droplets can be achieved by controlling
the injection speed of the syringe. This method of injection can
also be used to disperse multiple self-powered liquid metal mo-
tors [89]. The discrete liquid metal droplets in the solution with
independent moving capability would collide with each other and
further fuse into a single large liquid metal droplet.
Behaviors, such as planar locomotion and self-rotation, are also
discovered under DC voltage [111, 112]. In the experiments, liquid
metal droplets in the linear channel were observed to move from
the negative pole to the positive pole of the power [113]. Due to
the uneven intensity of the electric field, the surface charge of the
liquid droplets would be influenced and further lead to the imbal-
ance of the surface tension, which is responsible for the elongated
shape transformation and the locomotion of liquid metal droplet.
The surface tension of droplets near the negative electrode was rel-
atively large and the pressure difference between the machine at
the negative electrode and the surrounding solution environment
was also large, which could push the droplet to move in the di-
rection to the positive electrode. The experiments showed that the
electric field intensity, solution composition and the machine vol-
ume would affect the locomotion of the machine. An appeal of this
method is that it enables the transformation and shaping of liquid
metal through simple operation and offers opportunities for liquid
metal collection and soft robot manufacture in the future.
In addition, the soft nature of liquid metal provides an advan-
tage to manipulate them into small sizes and different shapes.
Compared to the complex manufacture of organic and most metal
nanomaterials, liquid metal enabled a simple sonication method to
prepare liquid metal nanoparticles in the aqueous solution or in
ethanol [114-116]. Through functionalization, it is easy to form a
stable colloidal suspension or load chemical drugs. One can even
control the shapes of liquid metal nanoparticles through tempera-
8 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
ture, light, and surfactants in the solution. Lin et al. discovered that
moderate heating at 70 °C for about 20 min could shape eutec-
tic gallium indium (EGaIn) nanoparticles into nanorods, which are
composed of gallium oxide monohydroxide (GaOOH) [105]. Miyako
et al. have further demonstrated the morphological changes of LM
nanocapsules triggered by laser irradiation [53]. Gu et al. took ad-
vantage of the shape transformable behavior of liquid metal under
heat and combined with graphene quantum dots (GQD) for intra-
cellular drug delivery [54]. These shape transformation phenom-
ena of liquid metal droplets offer opportunities in the drug deliv-
ery system, endosomal escape, and enhanced tumor destructions.
From bulk liquid metals to nanoscaled droplets, liquid metals
exhibit high plasticity with tunable behavior in morphology, which
could be used either as transformable soft devices in biomedical
fields or as smart nanomaterials to accomplish innovative disease
therapies.
2.6. Biocompatibility and degradability
Different from mercury, gallium-based and bismuth-based met-
als with low vapor pressure render them a better substitute and
much safer materials to humans. Generally, these metals are rather
stable in neutral solutions. The oxide skin, mainly Ga2 O3 , would
dissolve in a mild acidic or alkaline solution, which makes a way
to remove the oxides. In the alkaline solution such as NaOH solu-
tion, Ga(OH)4 − would produce on the surface of liquid metal, at-
tract positive ions like Na+ to its surface and form an electric dou-
ble layer (EDL), which works as a charged capacitor [117].
Considering the potential release and cytotoxicity of the im-
planted materials, researchers tested the element release of
Bi35 In48.6 Sn16 Zn0.4 alloy through immersion experiments. With 14
days of immersion in Hank’s solution, the ICP-MS results showed
that except for zinc, other metals were not detected in the solu-
tion [43]. While zinc is the essential element, the low concentra-
tion would not harm the human body. The immersion solution was
further used to culture 3T3 cells, and the results showed that the
viability was not influenced. Further, researchers tested the in vivo
biocompatibility of the alloy through subcutaneous implantation.
After 14 days, the implant was taken out, and no visible damage
was detected. The H&E staining results showed increased infiltra-
tion of inflammatory cells and the formation of neovascularization.
Actually, gallium compounds are used in medical applications
since thirty years ago. For example, the radioactive gallium (67 Ga
citrate) has been utilized to detect lymphomas as tumor imaging
agents [118]. Studies demonstrated that gallium nitrate could be
utilized as an active agency to suppress the growth of tumors. Gal-
lium nitrate has already been approved by the Food and Drug Ad-
ministration (FDA) for the treatment of hypercalcemia, metabolic
bone disease and other cancers [119]. Besides, the immunosup-
pressive and anti-inflammatory effect of gallium compounds is also
discovered [119]. What’ more, the gallium-based alloy has been
used as a restorative material by the dentist for a long time. As one
of the alloy metals, bismuth was regarded as green metal to substi-
tute toxic metal lead, since bismuth and its compound are harm-
less to humans. Mainly, Peptobismol, a bismuth-based compound,
is utilized to treat stomach disease [120]. A 28-day study revealed
that no significant changes in vital clinical signs were detected in
SD rats through oral administration of as high as 10 0 0 mg kg−1
daily bismuth [121]. For indium, it is only considered of potential
developmental toxicity to humans under a high level of exposure
[122]. The pure gallium, bismuth and fewer amounts of indium
present less cytotoxicity to humans and some of the metal com-
pounds even show therapeutic effects in clinics. While the toxicity
of pure metals and their compounds varied a lot. Due to the rel-
atively high chemical activity of gallium, the possible compounds
and products in the physiological environment under various treat-
ments should be considered and reevaluated in detail.
Due to the facile fabrication and easy functionalization of liq-
uid metal nanomaterials, their medical application, as well as the
biosafety of these tiny materials, received great attention. Through
intravenous injection, liver function markers and urea were de-
tected to evaluate the influence of 45 mg kg−1 nanomaterials treat-
ment on livers and kidneys. No significant changes in the markers
were found through a 90 days’ investigation [52]. In addition, be-
sides a vibration of platelets in the first week, blood routine ex-
amination showed no difference from the control group. Results
of necropsy and H&E staining of the crucial organs indicated that
no injury was detected. Finally, the excretion investigation implied
that these metals might excrete through urine and feces. What is
more, recent research demonstrates the degradable capability of
liquid metal nanoparticles resulted from the phenomenon of gal-
lium dissolution in a mild acid environment, which not only con-
tributes chemical drug release in tumor sites but also serves as an
advantage to these inert metals (Fig. 2d) [52]. Although the long-
term toxicity data is still lacking, the current data of liquid metal
nanoparticles has shown that these low-melting alloys are rather
safe until now.
NaK alloy, commonly 22% sodium and 78% potassium by
weight, are mixed through shaking in a reactor with a melting
point as low as −12.8 °C. NaK alloy is very active in contact with
water, producing NaOH, KOH and releasing a large amount of heat
and hydrogen gas, which is regarded as harmful material due to
their high chemical activity. They are often sealed in an organic
solution like kerosene or inert dry nitrogen before use. However,
owing to the fast reaction speed and heat release, alkali metal was
demonstrated as a highly economical and efficient heating seed in
tumor hyperthermia.
2.7. Magnetic property
Low-melting liquid metals per se are not magnetic. However,
the electromagnetic field and electrolyte together would induce
the liquid metal to rotate. Wang et al. discovered that between
a pair of concentric ring electrodes with a voltage of 0.03 V, the
liquid metal in NaOH solution on a permanent magnet was pro-
pelled to rotate centrifugally on [46]. The magnetic field serves as
a better manipulation approach compared to the electric field due
to the non-contact working modes [123]. Thus researchers pro-
posed many methods to operate them under the magnetic con-
troller. They found that incorporating magnetic particles into liq-
uid metal droplets or coating on their surface would endow them
to manipulate by an external magnetic field [124]. For example,
Wang et al. fabricated liquid-metal enabled ubiquitous soft mate-
rial (PLUS-M) materials with iron particles, exhibiting strong mag-
netism and low density [63]. Zhang et al. prepared magnetic EGaIn
with Ni cap, which showed the apparent magnetic property to con-
trol the movement of the droplets. What’ more, the Ni capped self-
driving liquid metal motor could be manipulated to start and stop
the movement [50]. Magnetic control provides the manipulation in
a 3D space, high penetration to deep tissues and remote control
outside the body, which was considered as a promising modality as
transcranial magnetic stimulation in many disease treatment such
as depression, autism, and other nerve diseases.
Guo et al. developed a magnetic liquid metal-based multifunc-
tional soft electronics [125]. In their study, the designed multi-
functional flexible electronics showed combined performances of
remote self-healing, water-degradable, and thermal transfer print-
ing, which attribute to three parts of the materials including Fe-
GaIn ink, degradable PVA substrate, and adhesive fructose. Under
the magnetic field, the Fe particles could be gathered to follow
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
the movement of the magnet. Based on this phenomenon, a sin-
gle magnet could facilitate the self-healing behavior of Fe-EGaIn
based conductive electric circuit after single or multipoint mechan-
ical damage. Under water circumstance, the electric circuits could
be degraded and magnetic liquid metal ink could be further recy-
cled to reduce environmental pollution. What’s more, the present-
ing electronics could further achieve enhanced transfer printing to
other highly stretchable polymers through heating to broaden the
applications in stretchable electronics and flexible sensors.
2.8. Thermal property
Liquid metals own superior thermal property as metals. The
thermal conductivity of GaIn24.5 is 26.6 W m−1 K−1 , which is al-
most 44 times higher than water (0.6 W m−1 K−1 ) [91]. So low-
melting liquid metals are applied in chip cooling for comput-
ers [126-128]. To further improve their thermal property, highly
thermally conductive metal particles, such as copper, silver, are
adopted to regulate the thermal performance in many applications.
For example, the thermal conductivity would have 100% increase
after doping copper particles [70]. Besides the thermal conductiv-
ity, liquid metals were able to transform light energy into heat.
Miyako et al. achieved the thermographic images of a droplet of
1 mg liquid metal and recorded temperature elevation of about 20
°C under 785 nm NIR laser (Fig. 2e) [53]. Further, the nanostructure
of liquid metal via photopolymerization displayed superior temper-
ature change in solution with a photothermal conversion efficiency
of 52% and has been applied in photothermal treatments of tumors
in vivo.
3. Injectable LM-enabled biomedical applications
With diverse merits of flowability, low viscosity, favorable bio-
compatibility, easy fabrication process and multifunction, many
biomedical applications enabled by liquid metal through injection
are introduced in this part and summarized in Table 4. The fabrica-
tion methods of liquid metal materials concerning these biomedi-
cal applications are summarized in Table 5.
3.1. Imaging
As implanted foreign biomaterials, regardless of the therapeutic
effects or functions, the in vivo monitoring of all kinds of behaviors
of such a dynamic organism is extremely important. These include
distribution, metabolism, and interaction with immune systems or
other organs such as liver, kidney, and target organs, etc., as well as
acquiring the knowledge of the implants not only for the implants
at fixed locations but also for transformable materials, where the
surrounding environment could be more complicated. Understand-
ing the knowledge of the in vivo behavior is vital for constructing
integrated materials of diagnostic and therapeutic, and is signifi-
cant in fundamental research and clinic usage. Currently, the most
common imaging technique for injectable hydrogels is to intro-
duce near-infrared (NIR) probes to perform fluorescence imaging.
However, the penetration depth of near-infrared light is limited in
the biological body and the stability of long-time imaging is not
enough for long-term investigation [39]. Therefore, in order to im-
prove the detective depth, researchers develop radiopaque hydro-
gels via adding iodine imaging contrast agent directly or crosslink-
ing to the hydrogels, enabling X-ray and CT imaging with high spa-
tiotemporal resolution and three-dimension imaging [129]. How-
ever, this requires a complex process of chemical modification to
obtain a stable imaging modality.
Liquid metals, considered as radiation-proof materials instead of
lead due to their high density, are fabricated into a stretchable film
9
with superior radiation-shielding capability [130]. Recent studies
have demonstrated that liquid metal can be used as an imaging
contrast agent to display the position of the materials after enter-
ing into the body. Because of their excellent radiopaque, it is pos-
sible to obtain clear photos with better contrast and more detailed
information in deep tissues. In clinics, X-rays are mainly used for
bones check for their strong absorption of X-ray than soft tissues.
Yi et al. demonstrated that for porcine femurs, the gray value of
the low-melting alloy is even higher than that of the cortical bone,
displaying better imaging contrast under X-ray and CT radiation
[43].
In clinics, it is often necessary to obtain the position of big
blood vessels adjacent to target organs to reduce the risk of
surgery, because that the systemic circulation involves the supply
of oxygen and nutrients to various organs is of great importance.
Besides, among the blood vascular system, a better understanding
of the terminal blood vessels, especially the capillaries, is signif-
icant for the supervision of most disease process [131]. Angiogra-
phy is used in visualizing blood vessels with a contrast agent, com-
monly iodine or iodinated materials [132]. However, their imaging
capabilities are very limited for capillaries. Wang et al. for the first
time took advantage of the low viscosity and injectable character-
istic of liquid metals to perform multi-scale vascular imaging [48].
Through comparison, the contrast of blood vessels with the sur-
rounding tissues in the liquid gallium perfused group is several or-
ders higher than that with conventional iohexol agent (Fig. 3a). In
the photos of the porcine kidney, the tiny vessels of 0.1 mm could
be observed clearly (Fig. 3b). Further, the researchers discovered
that the injectable nanoscale liquid metal also displayed the capa-
bility to absorb radiation in solutions [52]. They demonstrated that
the photopolymerization modified liquid metal nanoparticles in a
low density would exhibit an enhanced X-ray intensity after light
activation. Subsequent injection of liquid metal into various types
of organs from rabbit or living mice revealed strong X-ray signals
(Fig. 3c) [53].
In addition to X-ray and CT imaging, injectable liquid metal was
found to be capable of photoacoustic imaging (Fig. 3d) [53]. Liquid
metal nanocapsules present the strongest photoacoustic signal at
680 nm, which are stronger than that of gold nanorods in the same
concentration. Further, researchers injected the nanomaterials into
the lower back of the mice and found that the photoacoustic sig-
nal intensity and the concentration of these nanoparticles showed
a linear relationship. Enhancement of the PA signal was observed
in the tumor-bearing mice with anti-EGFR modified liquid metal
nanocapsules injection. Thus, a theranostic platform based on liq-
uid metal nanoparticles could be built both for fundamental re-
searches and clinic applications.
After being implanted in human bodies, these liquid metal-
based materials with varied sizes ranging from bulk to nanosize
presenting an instant capability of imaging under X-ray or CT, and
providing an easy method of observation in bodies regardless of
the depth and spatial positions, would definitely benefit the use of
liquid metals. Furthermore, liquid metal nanoparticles with lower
metal content and radiopaque ability would be hugely beneficial.
As foreign materials, it is exceedingly vital to minimize injected
dose without sacrificing their contrast ability. So, further work
could concentrate on the problem to clarify the optimal doses.
On the other hand, it is the fact that X-ray radiation might harm
healthy tissues under long exposure time. Thus reducing the dose
or observation time of radiation would be significantly vital. Other
imaging technologies like PA imaging can be combined with CT to
achieve the aims of long-term monitoring.
 10
Table 4
Summarized biomedical applications of injectable liquid metal.

Types of liquid metal Injectable Applied mode Device Injectable location Biomedical application Ref.

X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
X-ray/CT Gallium/ Bi35 In48.6 Sn16 Zn0.4 alloy In situ injection Syringe Heart, kidney, Porcine femurs Monitor [43, 48]
EGaIn24.5 nanocapsules Caudal vein injection Syringe Caudal vein Monitor [53]
Photoacoustic imaging EGaIn24.5 nanocapsules In situ injection Syringe Lower back/Tumor Monitor [53]
Bone cement in tissue Bi35 In48.6 Sn16 Zn0.4 alloy In situ injection Syringe with a covered Porcine femurs Bone recovery [43]
engineering heater
Embolization agent Gallium Vessel injection Syringe Vessel Tumor therapy through [47]
nutrient deprivation
Biomedical electrodes Ga67 In20.5 Sn12.5 alloy Packaging in gelatin Syringe In the left side of the thorax ECG signal recording [9]
Biomedical electrodes EGaIn24.5 In situ injection Syringe Around tumor cells/Various Electrochemical tumor therapy [40]
cavities
Delivery of electric signal GaInSn alloy Around nerves Syringe The capillary pipette linking to Nerve connection [42, 206]
the distal sciatic nerve of frogs
or mice
Photothermal conversion EGaIn24.5 nanocapsules/Gallium Caudal vein injection Syringe Caudal vein Tumor photothermal therapy [37, 53, 202]
nanospheres/nanorods
Heating seed NaK alloy In situ injection Syringe with a In vitro tissue/tumors Hyperthermia of Tumors [55]
protective device
Smart robots Ga-In-Al In situ injection Syringe In vitro solution Cargo delivery [41]
Microfluidic pumps Galinstan droplet Direct injection Syringe Microfluidic channels Pumping of chemical solutions [181]
Smart robots Ga-In-Al In situ injection Syringe In vitro solution Cargo delivery [187]
Alginate modified Ga-In-Al/Nickel cap In situ injection Syringe In vitro solution Cargo delivery [50]
modified Ga-In-Al
Liquid metal conjugates droplet In situ injection Syringe In vitro solution Targeted recognition [51]
Nano-scale liquid metal Liquid metal In situ Syringe Vessel Drug delivery/Molecular [37, 52, 53]
biomaterials nanospheres/nanocapsules/nanorods injection/Intravenous imaging/Tumor
injection therapy/Transformable
nanomachine
Liquid metal hybrid through In situ injection Syringe Tumor Combined magnetic [45]
PEGylation hyperthermia and
chemotherapy
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
Table 5
Typical fabrication methods of liquid metal materials.
Types of injectable liquid metals Liquid metal size
Gallium/EGaIn24.5 / Ga67 In20.5 Sn12.5 Bulk state
alloy
Mg-GaIn mixture Bulk state
Ga-In-Al Bulk state
EGaIn24.5 nanocapsules ~150 nm
Gallium nanospheres ~107 nm
Gallium nanorods ~250 nm
Alginate modified Ga-In-Al/Nickel Millimeter droplet
cap modified Ga-In-Al
Liquid metal conjugates droplet Millimeter droplet
Liquid metal hybrid through Bulk state
PEGylation
Liquid metal droplets 172–590 μm
Liquid metal droplets Microdroplets-nanodroplets
Bi35 In48.6 Sn16 Zn0.4 alloy Bulk state
NaK alloy (1:1) Bulk state
3.2. Injection-enabled reversible transformable materials for tissue
engineering
Bismuth-based and gallium-based liquid metals exhibit solid
and liquid states respectively at room temperature due to the dif-
ference in melting points. After injection into the body, different
mechanical support can be provided for varied application modal-
ities, including bone cement as supporting materials or embolic
agents in tumor therapy.
Extensive bone defects usually involve joint replacements. Al-
though autograft is a gold standard in bone tissue healing, the lim-
ited source of donation, donor site defect and long surgical time of
surgery still remains the huge challenges [3]. Till now, bone ce-
ment is widely applied in the total knee arthroplasty. Acrylic bone
cement, based on polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and formed in
situ through mixing prepolymerized powder with liquid monomer,
is mainly applied in cemented total arthroplasty [133]. However,
the temperature rise of the cement would cause burns of sur-
rounding tissue and induce chemical necrosis via the unreacted
monomer release [134]. The complete polymerization would take
a long time, and the mechanical property of the cement, such as
tensile, bending and compressive strength, would be thus influ-
enced [135]. In particular, the repairmen surgery, which is often
required due to corrosion and wearing issues, would involve spe-
cial instrument operation and injection techniques, including cut-
ting femurs and removing the femoral shaft. Yi et al. proposed
a novel bone cement based on bismuth-based alloy with a melt-
ing point of 57.5 °C presented with a series of merits including
injectable capability, high plasticity, short consuming time, sim-
ple operation procedure and facile repair process [43]. The viscosi-
ties of this liquid metal at 74 °C and 95 °C are 4.0424 ± 0.0459
mPa•s, 3.5485 ± 0.0092 mPa•s respectively, which are significantly
lower than the viscosity of PMMA materials of about 20 mPa•s
in a specific range of operational temperature, making the oper-
ation of suction and injection easier. After heating, the alloy in
the liquid state would be formed into desired shapes in a short
time (Fig. 4a). For example, the process from injection to shap-
ing a stable scaffold entirely fitting with the inner cavity of bone
takes less than 10 min (Fig. 4b). The solidification time of this
bone cement from liquid to fully solid is only 2.93 min. The re-
searchers also defined the working time of the liquid metal alloy
material by curing time minus injection time, which was less than
2 min, much shorter than the working time of PMMA between
dough time and setting time. The short solidification and working
11
Fabrication methods Ref.
Heating and stirring till thoroughly mixed [40, 43, 47, 48]
mainly stirring at 300 °C for 60 min [49]
Through adding a film of Al flake to the Ga–In alloy [41]
Through pulse-type sonication and photopolymerization [53]
Through sonication [52]
Through sonication [37]
Through adding a film of Al flake and coating a hydrogel cap with Ni [50]
Through conjugating the biomolecule to a self-assembled monolayer [51]
(SAM)
Mixing of liquid metal and PEG with a vortex mixer for 10 s [45]
Fluidic injection [207]
Flow-focusing injection [208-210]
Heated at 400 °C for 24 h to make the target alloy [43]
The same quantity of sodium and potassium are stirred in a glass with [55]
olive oil under nitrogen condition
time of liquid metals would avoid possible shape change in vivo
and minimize the damage to surrounding healthy tissues, which
could be favorable as bone cement. Compared to PMMA implan-
tation, they share the advantage of injection operation with min-
imal invasion. While the removal of liquid metal can be operated
through heating and suction, it is more convenient for the repair
process.
Since the melting point of this alloy cement is close to 60 °C,
which is significantly higher than the human body, the researchers
injected this material into fresh porcine femurs and recorded the
interface temperature with a thermocouple. They found that the
time that temperature exceeded 44 °C was less than 1 min, which
was acceptable for in vivo implantation. From the H&E staining re-
sults, no significant thermal damage to the surrounding bone tis-
sues was observed (Fig. 4c, 4d). Therefore, the implanting process
would not harm to the surroundings. Furthermore, the alloy was
transplanted in mouse for a two-week observation. From the im-
mersion test, material corrosion of metals, which mainly refers to
zinc was detected within two weeks. As an essential element for
the human body, the appropriate content release of zinc would be
beneficial to humans. While the long term corrosion detection of
the implants is still needed for other foreign materials like Ga, In,
and Sn. Moreover, long-term safety detection requires further eval-
uation.
3.3. Injection of liquid metal for tumor vascular embolization therapy
The liquid metals’ characteristics of flow and phase change
could also be applied to tumor treatment. As we know, tumor
growth requires a large supply of oxygen and nutrients, which is
mainly delivered through blood vessels. So physical embolization
of tumor vessels offers an effective way to inhibit the rapid growth
of tumors. For example, transcatheter arterial embolization (TAE)
is utilized to prevent aneurysm rupturing via block blood supply
in the treatment of aneurysms [103]. Till now, embolism materi-
als contain metal micro coils, microsphere, and hydrogels [136]. To
improve their visibility, the study has been shown to incorporate
several metal materials or organic materials into the embolization
agents [137], which increases the complexity of the preparation
process. Wang et al. proposed that the room temperature liquid
metal could be adopted as a novel embolization agent with excel-
lent X-ray imaging capability and easy operation method via di-
rect injection (Fig. 5a) [47]. They injected liquid gallium into the
rabbit ear vein at the rim and the tip. The temperature change
around the injection site was observed and captured by a thermal
12 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722

Fig. 3. The imaging capability of liquid metals. (a) X-ray angiograms of hearts with liquid gallium and iohexol (left) and plots of the grayscale along the horizontal lines
at five different heights labeled in the left (right). (b) Vasculature structure of a pig kidney filled with liquid gallium under X-ray irradiation. Reproduced with permission
[48]. (c) 3D-X-ray photos and sectional views of heart, brain and eyeball of a rabbit after injected with liquid metal nanocapsules. Red arrows indicate the laser-irradiated
sites. Dashed lines represent the location for cross-section views. Scale bars, 1 cm. Reproduced with permission [53]. (d) Antibody-functionalized liquid metal nanocapsules
(100 μg ml−1 ) in tumor site of living mice. Ultrasound (gray) and PA (red) images were taken through the tumor via 750 nm laser excitation. Reproduced with permission
[53].

infrared camera. The decrease in local temperature was observed
due to the retardation of blood flow and necrosis was found after
several days. The cells near the blood vessels blocked by liquid gal-
lium showed an abnormal morphology in the H&E staining results
(Fig. 5b). Further, the blood test of more than a week demonstrated
the biosafety of the materials. Under X-ray, liquid gallium showed
a clear image, which was suitable for the integrated agent of di-
agnosis and treatment. The morphological change of cells and the
occurrence of necrosis indicates the initial therapeutic effect of liq-
uid metal embolism agent. While long-time retardation of tumor
growth in this method via embolism still needs more evidence.
Embolism agent of varied types and sizes through liquid metal
integrating with other biomaterials should be introduced. Some
studies also indicated that the formation of new blood vessels was
typical in the tumors areas to maintain their aggressive develop-
ment [138, 139]. So the embolism of single tumor vessel is not ef-
ficient in the complex system of tumor proliferation and invasion
[140]. Combination of the tumor embolotherapy with other tumor
therapies such as chemotherapy, hyperthermia, or immunotherapy
might be the solution for a new generation of tumor therapies.
3.4. Biomedical electrodes
With the development of materials and technologies, flexible
electronics have arisen increasing interest in recent years with
wide spread applications from e-skin, wearable devices to soft
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722 13

Fig. 4. Liquid-solid phase transition enabled liquid metal bone cement. (a) A designed molding of alloy cement in the shape of “BONE”. (b) A photo showed a fresh porcine
femur filled with liquid metal cement and placed in a 37 °C water bath (left). The temperature-time plot during the injection process (middle). The H&E staining of bone
tissue surrounding the alloy cement (right). (c) The liquid metal alloy implanted into the subcutaneous site of mice after 3, 7 and 14 days, respectively. (d) The corresponding
H&E staining of tissue underneath the alloy cement, respectively. Reproduced with permission [43].

robots and logic circuits [141]. Inspired by organisms in nature,
flexible electronic materials and devices are designed to mimic
human bodies, mollusks or physiological structures of various or-
ganisms, including highly elastic skin or muscle tissues [142-144].
These kinds of elastic materials as physiological sensors have an
advantage of eliminating the mismatch between the external de-
vice and the skin. Till now, liquid metals have already been applied
as flexible electrical lines, conformable electrodes, interconnects
or reconfigurable antennas, etc. Some novel conductive polymers
are used in soft electronics, while the limited conductive prop-
erties hindered several practical applications. Till now, traditional
methods of fabricating soft electronics are to print traditional rigid
metal materials onto a thin film or manipulate them into nanopar-
ticles on flexible substrates to achieve deformation such as bend-
ing, folding, twisting etc. [106]. In particular, special wavy and ser-
pentine structures, as well as other origami structures, enable var-
ious conductive patterns on elastomer materials, textiles or even
skins for flexible electronics [143, 145]. While due to the specific
structures and the fabrication techniques, the electrical conductiv-
ity would be decreased compared to the original bulk metals. On
the other hand, the sophisticated devices, as well as etching tech-
nologies further increase the difficulty for large-scale production.
14 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722

Fig. 5. The illustration of liquid metal-based tumor vascular embolization. (a) The influence of no occlusion (left), incomplete occlusion (middle) and complete occlusion
(right) on oxygen and nutrition by liquid metal (the first row). The liquid metal could be injected into or sucked out of the vessel as desired (the second row). (b) The
occlusive effect of liquid metal embolization at the rabbit ears. The appearance of necrosis in the ear (left, top) and the temperature distributions after operation for 0 h,
24 h, 48 h and 72 h (left, bottom). The H&E staining of the control and necrosis tissues (right). Reproduced with permission [47].

What’s more, because of the limited stretchability and repeatability
of the electronics enabled by special structures, they are suscepti-
ble to mechanical fatigue, which could influence their functionali-
ties.
In this regard, liquid metals have tremendous advantages,
which attribute to the intrinsically soft core. Thanks to the water-
like flowability, they are less susceptible to sacrifice much to the
overall structure and function after long-term curling, crumpling,
or stretching. So recent several years have witnessed increasing at-
tention and development of liquid metal materials in various print-
ing and fabrication technologies. Liquid metals have exhibited out-
standing effects and remarkable advantages in flexible electronics
as multifunctional materials [125]. At the beginning, the high sur-
face tension and low adhesion of liquid metals bring difficulties
to pattern them on soft substrates or micro-channels. Then re-
searchers developed a series of preparation methods to decrease
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
the surface tension and to enhance the adhesive behavior of liquid
metal materials, mainly through regulation of the oxidation degree
to fabricate stably flexible and stretchable electronics. For example,
researchers directly injected liquid metals into hydrogel channel to
fabricate ultra-soft electrodes with an enhanced ratio of signal-to-
noise of ECG signals [146]. Filling liquid metals into roll-ball pen-
enabled homemade circuits available to the public and got popular
[147]. This direct writing electronics with liquid metal ink made
it possible to fabricate flexible electronics directly on a polymer
substrate with a line width of about 200 μm. There are other re-
searchers who developed microcontact printing technology based
on liquid metals to realize the printing circuit on silicone elas-
tomer [148]. Through CO2 laser technology, conductive PDMS and
liquid metal ink could achieve direct printing on silicone elastomer
eliminating the time-consuming and laborious operations such as
photolithography [149]. Atomized spraying deposition technology
mainly utilized an airbrush and an air pump to spray a stream of
liquid metal microdroplets on different substrates. To design func-
tional electronics, a steel mask through chemical etching should
be prepared and tightly attached to the substrate to prevent mass
printing [80]. Wang et al. developed a dual-trans printing liquid
metal lines on elastomer substrates [150]. The mechanism involved
transfer printing and low-temperature induced transition technol-
ogy of liquid metals. First, conductive circuits were fabricated on
rigid PVC substrate with liquid metal printer followed with the
procedure that a stretchable film was attached to the conductive
surface and a freeze phase transition. Then the conductive circuits
can be successfully transferred to the stretchable film as a sen-
sor to collect physiological signals of humans. In addition, Guo
et al. proposed the ideal of modifying liquid metal inks or choos-
ing highly adhesive substrates to prepare conductive electric cir-
cuits [66, 67]. Various kinds of metal particles were mixed into liq-
uid metal inks to enhance both the electrical conductivity and the
wettability on the substrates. Through rolling and transferring, re-
searches showed that semi-liquid metal inks could enable fast and
large-scaled fabrication of electronics on various substrates such as
PVC (polyvinylchlorid), PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and paper
etc. [67, 69]. Aided by highly selective adhesion materials, includ-
ing PU glue, PMA glue, liquid metal electronics could achieve fast
preparation of smart fabrics, e-skins and e-tattoo etc. [66, 92].
In addition, Wissman et al. found that the adoption of two liq-
uid metal droplets could help to constitute a programmable elec-
tric switch [141]. The mechanism was to control the generation or
the removal of the oxide on the surface to regulate the coales-
cence and separation of liquid metal devices. Its applications on
the traditional electronic industry show great significance and role
in future development of liquid transistor, data storage and logic
circuits.
For soft and stretchable materials, it is inevitable to avoid cir-
cuit breakage and instability induced by mechanical damage after
long-term deformation such as compressing, stretching, bending
and twisting. Therefore, materials with self-repairing function have
special significance, which can not only maintain the stability of
the electronics, but also extend the lifetime of the circuits. Liquid
metals have been employed as unique self-healing materials based
on the excellent fluidity, electrical conductivity and multifunctional
properties in combination with other metallic or non-metallic ma-
terials.
Li et al. fabricated a serpentine structure through injecting liq-
uid metals into PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) and the conductive
materials showed with self-healing property after being cut [151].
Palleau et al. injected liquid metals into self-healing polymers to
form self-healing and shape reconfigurable soft electronics [152].
When the circuit is broken by external damage, the broken part
can be reconnected and then back to work normally. What’s more,
it was also possible to assemble 2D or 3D connectors of different
15
configurations according to needs and preferences. Similar to the
method, Xin et al. dispersed liquid metal nanoparticles into sul-
fur polymers with self-healing ability, the as-made composites not
only showed improved mechanical and electrical properties, but
also enabled the characteristics of repairing [72]. While the self-
healing property was mainly dominated by the polymer and it took
a relatively long time to repair. In addition, researches involving
composite of liquid metal and silicone elastomer accomplish auto-
matic self-healing of electrical properties, which is of considerable
significance [153].
Besides, liquid metals integrating magnetic particles such as
iron or nickel particles to enable magnetic liquid metals can also
be utilized in the controllable preparation of electronics in a non-
contact way. For example, Ma et al. proposed an electronic fabri-
cation technique with magnetic liquid metals [65]. The prepared
magnetic liquid metals would produce more oxide in the mixture,
which facilitated the adhesive to the substrate. Then through sim-
ple magnetic manipulation, it was easy to fabricate various circuits,
including paper, hydrogel, PDMS, Ecoflex, or even on the surface or
in the inner space of 2D or 3D structures. In addition, magnetic
field could also be adopted to easily control the movement of liq-
uid metal droplets in solution or non-solution environments to ful-
fill complex missions such as fusion, deformation, drug delivery or
vessel clean [123, 124].
Besides soft nature enabled high flowability, excellent electrical
conductivity makes liquid metal stand out among those flexible or-
ganic biomaterials and play essential roles in stretchable electron-
ics, soft robotics, self-healing electronics and especially biomedi-
cal electronics [26, 36, 72, 114, 154, 155]. The multifunctional mer-
its of liquid metals render them with diverse applications includ-
ing providing mechanical support through phase change, filling the
damaged cavity as well as recording and delivering electric sig-
nals as biomedical sensors and stimulators [43, 156, 157]. Bene-
fiting from their electrical characteristics, liquid metal electrodes
are utilized to measure, acquire and transmit physiological signals
for aims of disease diagnosis, monitoring, and therapeutics. Gen-
erally, traditional implanted electrodes or stimulators usually in-
volve massive operative wounds, amounts of medical expenses and
uncomfortable feelings for patients. Other novel micro-injectable
electrodes usually require sophisticated technology and high oper-
ating skills. Liquid alloy, with advantages of transmitting electric
energy in high efficiency and an amorphous form, which would
greatly reduce the mismatch with biological tissues, offers promis-
ing potential as implants in practical applications. The researchers
used liquid metal as a surface electrode to obtain the physiologi-
cal EEG signal of the rat. The recorded ECG signals were basically
the same as the conventional button electrodes (Fig. 6a) [158]. As
recording electrodes, liquid metals exhibit excellent performance
as the traditional ones. The operation of liquid metal is more com-
fortable, and the shapes can be manipulated arbitrarily.
Most rigid metals implanted into tissues or organs often call for
open surgery, increasing the difficulty of operation and risk of in-
fection. Small wounds would benefit both patients and doctors. Jin
et al. proposed a method of in situ fabricating three-dimensional
medical electronics via direct injection of liquid metal and packag-
ing gel [159]. The in-situ fabrication of the biomedical electrode
was accomplished through first injecting and forming a packag-
ing gel with a reserved channel followed by injecting liquid metal
into the cavity. The injectable liquid electrode was performed on
pork tissue. From the cross-sectional photograph, the domain pre-
sented a uniform distribution of liquid metal and the gel, where
they were connected closely (Fig. 6b). The formed electrodes on
the breast of mice were utilized to record electrocardio signal. The
liquid metal electrode with 5 mm in length was formed with a
tiny wound near the left upper arm of the mice. The recorded
EEG presents with typical characteristics including a P wave, a QRS
16 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
Fig. 6. Injectable biomedical electrodes for physiological signal recording. (a) ECG test and signals from a rabbit with a button electrode (top) or liquid metal electrode
(bottom). Reproduced with permission [158]. (b) The cross-sectional photograph of an injectable electrode within porcine tissue. (c) Experimental illustration of in vivo ECG
signal recording with an injectable liquid metal electrode. (d) Schematic illustration of the ECG recording and the recorded ECG signal of a mouse at 5 min and 10 min after
anesthesia. Reproduced with permission [159].
complex and a ST-segment (Fig. 6c, 6d). Besides, researchers also
showed that the electrodes could serve as an electric stimulator to
drive muscle contraction with a low voltage of 2 V to frog’s sciatic
nerve. As injectable implants, although large bulks of liquid metal
in vivo can be sucked out with syringes, clearance of small residue
of materials would be considered. Regarding the possible leakage
issues, the packaging of liquid metals should be emphasized. Be-
sides biocompatible gelatin, other hydrogels or polymers with bi-
ological compliance and elastic properties should be considered as
packaging materials to reducing the direct exposure of implants to
tissues.
Liquid metal enabled electrodes could also deliver a series of
electric energy to the tumor site for tumor therapy. Depending on
the different forms of electrical energy, there are two kinds of ther-
apeutic modalities. One is tumor growth inhibition therapy with
alternating current, which was also termed as tumor treating fields
(TTFields) and the other is electrochemical tumor therapy with di-
rect current.
The alternating electric field with a low density and interme-
diate frequency (10 kHz to 1 MHz) has shown to play a pos-
itive role in influencing tumor growth via an anti-microtubule
mechanism both in vitro and in vivo [160]. Studies on cancerous
cells, tumor-bearing mice and patients with recurrent glioblastoma
demonstrated the effectiveness of the TTFields [160-162]. The tu-
mor growth inhibition was observed and the survival time was
obviously prolonged. In order to solve the uncomfortable prob-
lem caused by these rigid electrodes, Li et al. proposed a liquid
metal-based spray-printing method to cover the tumor skin parts
and conformably deliver the alternative frequency electric of 5 V
300 kHz to suppress tumor growth. Significant tumor volume re-
duction was observed through this approach [163].
Electrochemical tumor therapy employing direct voltage or cur-
rent has been proven to be a very effective way for local tumor
treatments [164, 165]. The mechanism of tumor damage lies in
three aspects, including electrolysis, electrophoresis, and electroos-
mosis, which would produce serious pH change and toxic elec-
trochemical products around electrodes, further inducing dehydra-
tion around anode and edema around cathode [166]. Liu’s group
proposed to use amorphous liquid metal electrodes to substitute
traditional rigid electrodes with many merits, including arbitrary
shaping ability, alleviating patient’s pain, avoiding the uncomfort-
able feeling, exhibiting great potential regarding those irregular
tumors and complex cavities in digestive and circulatory systems
[40]. Frequently, the ablation area in electrochemical tumor ther-
apy is closely related to the arrangement of electrodes and the
experience of the operator without any standardization stemmed
from the fact that the active region of a single electrode is limited
and irregularly large tumors would need plenty of electrodes. So
the treatment effect would be impaired and recurrent could ap-
pear. Considering those irregular cavities, liquid metal electrodes
through injection can be conformably filled into and shaped into
various morphologies eliminating the complicated fabrication pro-
cess of rigid electrodes. In vitro results with injectable liquid elec-
trodes showed that through changing the shape of electrodes, tu-
mor destruction effect was significantly enhanced (Fig. 7b, 7c). The
researchers also constructed in vitro experiments to systematically
compare the treatment effect of injectable liquid metal electrodes
with the traditional Pt electrodes and discovered that liquid metal
electrodes would deliver more coulomb dose, induce more dra-
matic pH change and produce more electrochemical toxic to fa-
cilitate tumor destruction (Fig. 7a). Further, the in vivo animal ex-
periments showed that the amorphous electrodes presented a bet-
ter performance in tumor growth inhibition and lifetime extension.
The amorphous characteristics of liquid metal electrodes or these
enabled flexible electronics should be extended to more extensive
applications from other methods of tumor therapies to devices of
detection of physiological, chemical and mechanical signals of bio-
logical bodies.
3.5. Facilitating the delivery of an electric signal
Due to the limited regenerative capacity of neurons, central and
peripheral nerve diseases arose wide interests in fundamental and
clinic fields [167, 168]. Nerve degeneration induced by peripheral
nerve injury is usually considered as an irreversible process and
might lead to further dyskinesia [169]. Although the advance of
material and technology development in autografts, allografts and
nerve conduits, the repair of nerve injury still faces enormous chal-
lenges such as limited donor implants, immunological rejection of
allografts and systemic immunosuppression [170]. Electric stimula-
tion has shown positive influence to facilitate nerve repair such as
using electric pulse stimulation in the treatment of drug-resistant
epilepsy [171], increasing numbers of both motor and sensory neu-
rons axon after tibial nerve injury [172], and improvements on
muscle strength and activity after stroke with cyclical electrical
stimulation [173].
Liu’s group proposed for the first time to use eutectic GaInSn
serving as electric channels for the peripheral nerve function re-
covery with a number of apparent advantages, such as easy prepa-
ration and operation, favorable conductivity, high compliance and
stretchability, which makes subjects feel comfortable under elon-
gated or contracted force when the body moves [42]. First, the
nerve damage model was realized by using ophthalmic to cut the
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722 17

Fig. 7. Injectable biomedical electrodes for tumor therapy. (a) Schematic design of EChT with rigid platinum (left) or liquid metal electrodes (right) in vitro. (b) Five therapeu-
tic method configurations with liquid metal electrodes in different shapes. (c) The cell viability of EChT under different configurations of liquid metal electrodes. Reproduced
with permission [40].

Fig. 8. Facilitation of the connection of electric signal from the transected sciatic nerve with injectable liquid metal. (a) The photograph of bullfrog’s body after GalnSn
alloy injection. (b) The electric stimuli signal and the recorded excitement signal from the intact nerve, the transected nerve connected with Galinstan or Riger’s solution,
respectively. (c) The proposed three kinds of nerve conduits for repairers of the injured peripheral nerve. They are nerve conduit with microchannels (left, top), with a shape
of thin slice (right, top), with concentric tubes (bottom). Reproduced with permission [42].

sciatic nerve on a bullfrog. The transected nerve composed of the
proximal sciatic nerve and the distal sciatic nerve linked with gas-
trocnemius was reconnected with a capillary pipette infused by
liquid metal with 3 cm in length and 0.5 mm in diameter to fa-
cilitate the electrical signal transmission (Fig. 8a). The liquid alloy
could be filled through syringe injection and recycled via aspiration
after treatment. Square wave electric signal was utilized to stim-
ulate the proximal part of the transected nerve, and electroneuro-
graphic signal on the distal nerve was recorded and compared with
the sound signal. The electric signal from proximal nerve passing
through liquid metal to the distal nerve was similar to those stan-
dard signals than connection via Riger’s solution, which could in-
duce the contraction of the gastrocnemius where the transected
nerve linked (Fig. 8b). Since liquid metal is almost insoluble, it en-
ables high stability of transmission of neural signals without sig-
nificant electric leakage phenomenon caused by the Riger’s solu-
tion group. What’s more, due to the low impedance of liquid metal,
which is several orders lower than electrolyte solution, liquid metal
would show promising advantages in the transmission of weak
electroneurographic signals. In another study, Liu et al. utilized liq-
uid gallium to repair the sciatic nerve of mammal [174]. The gal-
lium was infused in the silicone rubber to facilitate nerve function
through the connection the two stumps of the sciatic nerve of the
mouse. Typically, after neurotmesis, the fiber activity of the den-
ervated muscles would become abnormal. Fib was used to accu-
rately detect denervation, the existence of which presents muscle
atrophy. The fib signal of the denervated muscles would usually
occur at about a week, indicating atrophy. While due to the en-
hanced transmission of the nerve signal, liquid metal connected
muscles postponed the occurrence of atrophy until about eight
weeks. This was also observed from the pathological photo of the
denervated gastrocnemius. Besides, they also proposed several ap-
proaches through combining conductive liquid metal with growth
factors, Schwann cells, extracellular matrices or other scaffolds to
promote the regeneration of the nerve tissues (Fig. 8c).
18 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722

Fig. 9. Thermal conversion enabled tissue ablation. (a) Schematic illustration of in vivo photothermal therapy with Mg-GaIn (liquid metal-doped magnesium particles).
Reproduced with permission [49]. (b) Photographs of liquid NaK alloy stored in kerosene and two types of the injector. (c) Photographs of the injection area and the burned
areas on a pork tissue. (d) Schematic illustration of administration on tumor site via injectable alkali alloy with protective devices. The transparent glass hood was placed on
the tissue to avoid splashing of alkali alloy and nitrogen gas keeps flowing into the hood as a protective gas under pressure on nitrogen bottle. Reproduced with permission
[55].

Irreversible nerve degeneration diseases, represented by
Alzheimer disease and Parkinson’s disease that is torturing more
and more aged people, remain one of the biggest challenges to
researchers in the whole world. Till now, no cure is found to
reverse the degeneration process of these diseases. Compared to
chemical drugs, electric stimulation could serve as a more direct
and accurate method of manipulation. In the recovery process
of several axonal injuries, neurons might be more sensitive to
surrounding environments. The rigid metal implants might neg-
atively influence axon growth. Thus highly flexible liquid metals
with soft nature might play a decisive role during the recovery
process. In the complex nerve system where neurons respond to
both electric and chemical signals, the therapeutic methods should
also be diverse and combined therapies with electric stimulation,
chemical agents, cytokines, or even involvement of neural stem
cells should be considered for future studies.
3.6. Thermal conversion in energy medicine
Hyperthermia, using local heat to induce ablation of tumor tis-
sues, is a minimally invasive tumor therapy, including radiofre-
quency, microwave and laser ablation, and so on. [175]. To enhance
heat distribution and transfer in the local region, materials with
high thermal conductivity was employed in the therapy. Liquid
metals with multifunctional properties, especially favorable ther-
mal property compared to an aqueous solution, could further inte-
grate with other materials to enhance their combined characteris-
tic in conductivity in electric and thermal power as well as pho-
tothermal capability. For example, Wang et al. proposed a Mg-GaIn
mixture possessed with favorable thermal conductivity, high plas-
ticity, flexibility and biocompatibility serving as high photothermal
conversion materials, which can generate a large amount of heat
under laser irradiation (Fig. 9a) [49]. Mg particles were doped into
GaIn24.5 alloy to achieve conformable photothermal treatments of
irregular surface tumors. Upon laser irradiation, this composite
exhibits noticeable temperature elevation. Flexible nature enables
this composite transformation into desired shapes and attached to
irregular surfaces even with a positive curvature without decreas-
ing its photothermal characteristic. As we know, Mg is considered
as a biodegradable green material to humans. Further, the mix-
ture was demonstrated with high biosafety. The soaking solution
showed no influence on the cell viability under 48 h co-culture
and cells were almost intact under the fluorescence microscope. In
vivo tumor ablation on mice showed a promising treatment effect
on suppressing tumor growth and held great potential in future
tumor therapy. The plasticity and flowability constraint with each
other. Therefore the injectable properties would be impaired with
the improvement of the plasticity. So optimal proportion on liquid
metal and the addition particles could be further confirmed in the
dynamically balanced relationships. In addition, taking advantage
of the high photothermal property of liquid metals, Fan et al. en-
capsulated them into thermal responsive bulk polymeric hydrogels
to achieve rapid temperature rise and volume shrink of hydrogels
[176]. Under laser irradiation, these liquid metal nanoparticles with
an average diameter of 530 nm could convert light energy into a
large amount of heat. When the temperature exceeded the lower
critical solution temperature (LCST), the hydrogel would shrink to
extrude inner water and molecular, which was expected to be ap-
plied in combined hyperthermia and chemotherapy.
Alkali metals are regarded as dangerous materials due to their
high chemical activity. However, owing to their fast reaction speed
and a large amount of heat release concerning the chemical reac-
tion with water, alkali metals are demonstrated as a highly eco-
nomical and efficient heating seed in tumor hyperthermia [38,
177]. The chemical ablation, mainly acidic or alkaline solution, ap-
peared with minimal invasion and large ablation area was iden-
tified as a useful tumor destruction method and the treatments
have been tested on experimental animals [178]. Cressman et al.
have also done a series of studies on the chemical ablation ef-
fect with weak acid and base, such as acetic acid, sodium per-
manganate, sodium hydroxide, ammonium hydroxide [179, 180].
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
The alkali metal therapy takes advantage of the heat release in
the central region, while the resulting alkaline environment is also
considered as additional chemical ablation to tumors. Besides, the
metal cation products in this exothermic reaction are mainly Na+
and K+ , which serve as critical components in our biological flu-
ids. Rao et al. utilized NaK alloy as an injectable heating seed in
both in vitro and in vivo thermal ablation of tumors (Fig. 9b, 9c)
[55]. The resulted ablation region was three times larger in vol-
ume than that of the injected metal due to the substantial thermal
release. The relationships between injection speed and the tem-
perature rise, hydrogen production were also calculated theoreti-
cally. It is noteworthy that the probable occurrence of the metal
splashes and sparks could be very dangerous and personal protec-
tion is necessary. A transparent glass mask should be placed on
the ablated tissue and connected with a nitrogen bottle, providing
protective nitrogen gas and leaving room for gas outlet (Fig. 9d).
The hyperthermia therapy with injectable alkali metals as heating
seed should be reconsidered as effective tumor ablation method as
long as the protective devices are safe enough.
3.7. Microfluidic pumps
Generally, liquid pumps involving the conversion of various ex-
ternal energies, including electric, magnetic, chemical and heat en-
ergy into the actuated driving force of the liquid, display essen-
tial applications in energy, environment, biomedical signal detec-
tion, microfluidic system [84]. However, there remain many chal-
lenges in the liquid pump system, such as the miniaturization of
the energy supply systems (especially simplifying the fabrication
process), the transmission and conversion efficiency of the energy
supply system and the flow rate. Especially the actuated device
plays a critical role in the accurate detection of physiological or
chemical signals in microfluidic pumps. Liquid metal has already
presented promising prospects as microfluidic channels, electrodes,
valves, sensors, and chip cooling in biomedical devices [84]. Fur-
ther, the combination of the surface electric double layer in elec-
trolyte solutions and its soft feature enables the liquid metal to
exert potential value in the delivery of solution of drugs in mi-
crofluidic systems.
For example, Tang et al. proposed a liquid pump based on a
droplet of Galinstan utilizing a dynamic electric field to actuate
the flow of the solution (Fig. 10a) [181]. The electrowetting and
de-electrowetting of the liquid metal surface lead to the contin-
uous conversion of electrical energy into mechanical energy. Liq-
uid metal droplet forms an electric double layer on its surface in
NaOH solution (Fig. 10b). The shift of electric charge on the sur-
face happens under the influence of an external non-uniform elec-
tric field, which would further cause the imbalance of surface ten-
sion according to Lippman’s equation and Young-Laplace equation
(Fig. 10c). The surface tension difference on the two sides would
generate a force to push liquid metal to the positive electrode di-
rection, inducing the solution flow in the channel from the an-
ode to cathode direction, which was shown via a droplet of dye
(Fig. 10d). The imbalance pressure on the surface of liquid metal
provides a continuous force and liquid flow, which could also be
explained by the continuous electrowetting of liquid metal. Zav-
abeti et al. utilized the chemical solution in the surroundings to
induce the transformation and self-propulsion behavior of liquid
metal droplet (Fig. 10e) [182]. The designed device was composed
of two U-shaped channels filled with different ionic solutions and
connected with a liquid metal droplet (Fig. 10f, 10g). The influence
of the ionic imbalance on the capacitance of the electric double
layer would lead to the pressure difference on the surface of liquid
metal, which was similar to the effect of the electric field. Further-
more, based on the principle of the solution gradients, the appli-
19
cations of liquid metal self-driven pump and the liquid switching
were proposed in an electrolyte system.
These liquid metals enabled pumping or switching systems in-
volve the force analysis with regard to surrounding ionic environ-
ments. The chemical activity and the formation of EDL on the sur-
face would determine the behaviors of liquid metal droplets such
as rotating, locomotion and shape transformation. Taking advan-
tage of the native chemical environment of the human body, it
could be used as the source for more biomedical applications.
3.8. Smart robots for cargo delivery
Traditional drug targeted delivery methods usually involves
functionalized materials loading a certain amount of drugs or us-
ing microcapsule to encapsulate drugs along with the blood flow
or absorbed through the digestive system to specific regions. New
therapeutic approach employing the use of vascular robots inte-
grated with actuation, manipulation and biosafety features under
the vascular surgery navigation is hopeful of accomplishing a se-
ries of operations including drug delivery, tissue cutting and sam-
ple collection [183, 184]. The power supply is critical in such a
system, which is provided by a battery or wireless charging tech-
nology [185]. However, the limited capacity of the battery and the
radiofrequency energy with the aid of an external electromagnetic
field still need to overcome many challenges.
Therefore, advanced biomaterials-based self-powered micro-
robots attracted considerable interest in the field. Especially many
studies discovered novel actuating phenomenon and allied mi-
croactuators based on liquid metals [186]. For example, Gao et al.
reported a water-driven micromotor prepared with Al–Ga binary
alloy and powered by the continuous hydrogen generation when
contacting with water [187]. The resulting Al–Ga/Ti micromotor
coated by Ti layer on one side is only about 20 um in diame-
ter but could run at a speed of 3 mm s − 1 resulted from the
driving mechanism of the hydrogen bubbles accumulation and
the directional propulsion thrust. In the different biological en-
vironments, including PBS buffer, human serum, and cell culture
medium, the motor displayed excellent locomotion performance. In
another work, Tang et al. observed the jumping behavior of liquid
metal droplet in three-dimensional space upon contacting liquid
metal with solid metal [188]. This phenomenon was mainly trig-
gered by the generation and accumulation of bubbles on the sub-
strate, which was demonstrated with a trail of footprints. Zhang
et al. discovered a liquid metal self-driving system that requires
no extra energy supply after swallowing a piece of aluminum in
advance [41]. Further, the researchers analyzed the mechanism of
the self-actuated motion of liquid metals. When the aluminum
sheet contacted the liquid alloy, corrosion reaction would occur
and the aluminum sheet could be closely attached to the alloy.
To be specific, the oxide layer on the surface of aluminum sheets
would be corroded firstly to expose the inner aluminum. Then
the active aluminum further reacted with the NaOH solution and
produced hydrogen, the formation speed of which is related to
the concentration of the alkali solution. The heat generation in
the chemical reaction would also contribute a bit to the forma-
tion and release of the gas. However, the gas alone is not ef-
ficient to push the liquid metal to move. A galvanic cell would
automatically be formed between aluminum and liquid metal al-
loy where aluminum as the negative electrode and the alloy as
the positive electrode and the inner electric field provided driv-
ing force to the whole body. Around the aluminum electrode, the
electroosmotic flow effect would also exert a force on the flex-
ible body. On the other hand, electrons continued to flow from
the aluminum sheet to the surroundings and the preferential sit-
uation of the reduction reaction was on the surface of the alloy,
which would alter the charge distribution and unbalanced the sur-
20 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722

Fig. 10. Microfluidic pumps for delivery of solutions and drugs. (a) Schematic illustration of liquid metal enabled pump. (b) Schematic illustration of the surface charge
distribution of a liquid metal droplet in NaOH solution. (c) Schematic illustration of the surface charge distribution of a liquid metal droplet when an electric field is applied
between the electrodes. (d) Sequential snapshots of the pumping effect of a Galinstan droplet under a square wave signal (200 Hz, 5 Vp-p , 2.5-V DC offset, and 50% duty
cycle). At the same time, a droplet of dye is used to visualize the pumping effect. Reproduced with permission [181]. (e) Illustration on the top view of a liquid metal
droplet under dynamic ionic imbalance. (f) The schematic setup with two U-shaped open-top polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) channels in parallel. The two channels carry
different types of electrolytes, which showed in different colors, acidic in yellow and basic in blue. (g) The actual experimental set-up and the close-up view. The scale bar
is 5 mm. Reproduced with permission [182].

face tension on the liquid metal surface. According to Lippmann’s
equation, the surface tension around the negative aluminum elec-
trode is larger than the positive alloy electrode, where a high push-
ing force would form to driving liquid metal motor forward. Be-
sides the researchers also analyzed several influential factors to
the self-driving behaviors including solution concentration, viscos-
ity, temperature and the content of aluminum etc. The average
speed of a tiny liquid metal machine in a circular petri dish could
reach to 4.8 cm/s [189]. The duration of the continuous locomotion
was more than one hour and the length was more than a hun-
dred meter. This macroscopical self-motored movement at such a
large scale was very rare where liquid metals had great advantages
to tackle difficult tasks when considering complex shape trans-
formation capability and long endurance. For the application of
these motors in the biological system, the clearance of hydrogen
could be an issue to be considered. In the digestive system, they
can be expelled during flatulence or burping during the digestive
process.
However, the movement direction of these motors is random-
ized or hard to change from their original orbits. Efforts on the
manipulation of the direction and speed of these systems include
electric driving and magnetic controlling. For example, Tan et al.
attempted to utilize external electric to increase the driving capa-
bility of Al–Ga–In motor [190]. The speed was accelerated to about
43 cm s−1 under 20 V electrical stimuli and the movement tra-
jectories were similar to the electric field lines. In another study,
researchers utilized an external magnetic field to restrict the lo-
comotion of the self-moving motors [191]. In Al–Ga–In motor, the
galvanic cell would form between Ga–In and Al, and charge transi-
tion and distribution would happen inside the motor. According to
the Lorentz force formula F=QVB, where the Q represents the elec-
tric charge, V represents the speed and B represents the magnetic
field flux density, the external magnetic field would impose a force
to the moving and charged object. Further motion direction change
was observed experimentally and most tiny motors were confined
in the boundary zone under magnetic influence.
Based on the self-powered motor, several biomaterials and
drugs can be loaded and delivered to the designated loca-
tion. Zhang et al. loaded the alginate-based biomaterials to
the self-driven liquid metal motor packaging nanoparticles as
drugs through electroplating method, which could be manipulated
through the electric fields (Fig. 11a, 11b, 11c) [50]. The electric field
can also accelerate the speed. To precisely control the motion of
such a machine in the three-dimensional space, a nickel cap is fur-
ther modified on the surface to control the start, stop the locomo-
tion of the motor through the external magnetic field. Increasing
the velocity of the movement under the electric was also explored,
which would play an important role in the biomedical device and
drug targeted delivery (Fig. 11d). The loading ability of liquid metal
alone was also studied. Liang et al. prepared a kind of fluorescent
liquid metal droplets like a transformable chameleon with locomo-
tion movement under external electric field stimulation (Fig. 11e,
11f) [192]. The shape tunable liquid metal marble can release its
loaded nanoparticles on its surface in the electrolyte with a stim-
ulus.
To improve delivery accuracy, with the aid of chemical modi-
fication, Miyako and co-workers proposed a new strategy of liq-
uid metal functionalization in the macroscopic scale, which en-
abled operation in a physiological environment [51]. The approach
was executed through a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) coating
method, involving the formation of liquid metal conjugates via
16-MHDA, which offers promising applications for molecular re-
actions and might further mediate cell interaction. Based on this
approach, fluorescence tags and other biomolecules like antibody
and enzyme can be assembled on the surface, enabling visualiza-
tion, chemical reaction, and antibody-receptor interactions.
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722 21

Fig. 11. Smart robots for cargo delivery. (a) The prepared hybrid droplets, the Hyd/EGaIn-Al droplet (left), the Hyd/Al/EGaIn-Al motor (middle) and the Hyd/Ni/Al/ EGaIn-
Al motor (right). Scale bar, 2 mm. (b) The Hyd/EGaIn-Al droplet movement under an external electric field. (c) The spatiotemporal evolutional photographs of a 50 μL
Hyd/Ni/Al/EGaIn-Al motor in 0.2 mol L − 1 NaOH solution. (d) The snapshots of the “stop and go” behavior of the Hyd/Ni/Al/EGaIn-Al motor under the magnetic field. Scale
bar, 15 mm (top) and the acceleration of the Hyd/Ni/Al/EGaIn-Al motor by an electric field. Scale bar, 15 mm (bottom). Reproduced with permission [50]. (e) The movement
of a fluorescent liquid metal marble under an external electric field of 15 V. The corresponding mechanism is illustrated schematically in the right. (f) Photographs of the
actuation of a fluorescent liquid metal marble. Reproduced with permission [192].

In addition, there are other methods to control the movement
of liquid metals. Hu et al. discovered that graphene could regulate
the electrons on the surface of liquid metals [112]. They demon-
strated that liquid metal amoeba could climb the hills against grav-
ity under electrical fields. The mechanism lies in the modified elec-
tron distribution and the unbalanced surfaced tension of the soft
body of liquid metals. Then the larger surface force on one side of
the electrical field would push liquid metal robots to move forward
and constantly, which was large enough to overcome the gravity
of the earth. On the other hand, the extraordinary flexibility of liq-
uid metals can be easily adopted as the biomimetic object of soft
robots. Chen et al. discovered that liquid metals exhibited special
serpentine locomotion in CuSO4 solution [193]. The mechanism
mainly lied in the chemical reaction between gallium and copper
ions, which could produce gallium ions and copper. The movement
of electrons on the surface would then induce the surface tension
unbalance. In the redox process, the liquid metal was also discov-
ered with a phagocytosis effect to the newly formed copper, the
presence of which was detected in the inner part of the mixture.
This surface electron movement induced unique phenomenon dis-
plays promising aspects in self-growing circuits, ion detectors and
ion-motivated soft robots.
The realization of smart robots is of great value in biomedi-
cal fields, especially precision medicine. As mentioned above, liq-
uid metals have the potential to work as both transformable mo-
tors and cargo carriers, which are expected to achieve precise cell
recognition and drug delivery via accurate functionalization. Till
now, the mechanisms of actuating these motors are being unveiled
and the modification of liquid metals based on the understanding
of the formation of the oxide film is being refined via various ap-
proaches. These fabricated motors all show excellent performances
in a physiological solution environment, exhibiting the potential to
use in the blood circulation system or digestive system. Besides
small molecule drugs, protein drugs, genes or even cells might also
be delivered in this way.
3.9. Injectable nano-scale liquid metal biomaterials
Ultrasonication offers a straightforward approach to disperse
liquid metal into nanoscale form, through which the liquid metal
surface would be automatically covered by a slim oxide [116].
Many chemical molecules and biomolecules would readily bind
to its surface due to the thiolated ligands functionalization of
nanoparticles to enhance its biocompatibility, biostability and tar-
geting capability. The method would thus enable a series of appli-
cations via in site injection or through intravenous injection, which
includes molecular imaging, targeted drug delivery, photothermal
therapy and combined tumor therapy, based on which an inte-
grated theranostic platform can thus be built [194-196].
During the sonication process, Yamaguchi et al. systematically
analyzed several influential factors such as power, duration, and
temperature of sonication and the acid environment that have an
impact on the size of liquid metal nanoparticles [197]. The factors
of break-up and the coalescence provide two opposite forces and
contribute to the final size of these particles. Meanwhile, Hohman
et al. emphasized the choice of the interacting ligand that might
facilitate the size reduction of these nanoparticles [198]. Based on
the sonication approach, Lu et al. further designed a transformable
nanomedicine with a diameter of 107 nm that could actively tar-
get to tumor site for drug delivery [52]. Liquid metal nanocapsules
prepared by Chechetka et al. with high biocompatibility and favor-
able biosafety were used for tumor photothermal therapy due to a
mass of heat release under NIR laser irradiation (Fig. 12a) [53].
Generally, liquid metal nanoparticles usually present in a sphere
form due to the high surface energy, while the interaction with
their surrounding environment would enable several chemical re-
actions and change the shapes of nanoparticles [199]. For example,
Lu et al. proposed transformable liquid metal nanoparticles modi-
fied with GQDs, which can respond to the light stimulus, convert
the energy to dramatic morphological change from nanosphere to
nanorod and enable drug release to across the endosomal mem-
22 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722

Fig. 12. Injection-enabled nano-scale liquid metal biomaterials. (a) Liquid metal nanocapsule prepared via crosslinking of butadiyne moieties from DC(8,9)PC with 254 nm
ultraviolet irradiation. Reproduced with permission [53]. (b) The preparation route of the transformable liquid metal nanoparticles and their application scenery under light
irradiation, where the GQDs generate local heat and ROS, inducing the transition of gallium to GaOOH along with the shape transformation from nanospheres to nanorods.
Reproduced with permission [54]. (c) Schematic illustration of the construction process of the LM@MSN/DOX@HA liquid metal nanoparticles for integrated photothermal
and chemotherapy of tumors. Reproduced with permission [200]. (d) The preparation process of liquid gallium nanomachines via the pressure-filter-template method. (e)
Schematic illustration of the propelled motion of the asymmetric liquid metal nanomachines in the levitation plane through acoustic energy. (f) Schematic illustration of the
actively seeking and targeting of the liquid metal nanomachines to tumor cells and the subsequent photothermal therapy. Reproduced with permission [201].

brane barriers (Fig. 12b) [54]. The shape transformation was then
demonstrated to be associated with the production of reactive oxy-
gen species (ROS) and GaOOH, which might facilitate further the
cargo delivery of other biomolecules or genes not just for drugs
with enhanced endosomal escape. To further enhance the tumor
therapeutic effect, Hu et al. improved the stability and photother-
mal performance of liquid metal nanoparticles via mesoporous sil-
ica coating strategy and combined the photothermal method with
chemotherapy for synergistic therapy (Fig. 12c) [200].
Most of the studies reported the transformable phenomenon
of liquid metal particles from nanospheres to nanorods via chem-
ical reactions. While a fusible nanomedicine from rodlike to
nanosphere via the remove of gallium oxide layers was proposed
by He’s group [201], they demonstrated a liquid metal nanoma-
chine prepared through a pressure filter method and presented
with a liquid metal core and an oxide shell, which enables ac-
tive movement under ultrasound driving. This pressure-filter tem-
plate approach provides an easy way of shaping the size and shape
of these nanorods that can be tuned through regulating the fil-
ter templates (Fig. 12d). Stemmed from the asymmetric shape of
the nanorod machine in two ends, the acoustic wave would offer
a driving force to facilitate the movement of these nanomotors to
designated sites like tumor cells in a much precise way (Fig. 12e).
Interestingly, the entrance of these motors into HeLa cells and the
active transformation into a droplet were observed in experiments.
Through laser irradiation, these motors enable photothermal ther-
apy of tumor cells, which hold great potential in biomedical ap-
plications (Fig. 12f). Liu’s group and other researchers systemat-
ically compared the nanoparticles with different constitutes and
shapes, further demonstrating that the nanorod exhibited better
photothermal performance and tumor destructive effect [37, 202].
From bulk to nanosize liquid metals, sonication provides an
easy preparation approach. With size decreasing, these particles
are prone to be injected through syringes like biomedicine. On the
other hand, with the dose decrease, the biosafety of their biomed-
ical applications might be enhanced. Further, several untraditional
phenomena concerning shape transformation endow liquid metal
nanoparticles with stimuli-response ability to light, temperature
and chemical surfactants, which are beneficial for targeted cargo
delivery and development of smart nanorobots.
3.10. Liquid metal composite enabled biomedical applications
Magnetic-mediated tumor hyperthermia, usually involving the
use of magnetic nanoparticles, attracted increasing interest as a
useful tumor destruction method [203, 204]. Without the penetra-
tion limits of the NIR laser beam, the electromagnetic field could
cover the three-dimensional space and reach those located deep
in the body with no restriction, which is hard by other means.
Based on this, Zhao et al. tested the inductive heating property of
liquid metals and discovered that the non-magnetic liquid metal
could produce a large amount of heat under the alternative mag-
netic field (AMF) [45]. Based on this phenomenon, they designed
an injection-enabled liquid metal hybrid material via a PEGylation
method, showing superior advantages for combined magnetic hy-
perthermia and chemotherapy (Fig. 13). The prepared materials en-
dow with CT imaging capability in vivo and at the same time, en-
ables stimuli-responsive drug release upon both pH and AFM dual
stimulation. This multifunctional tumor therapy enabled by this
amorphous liquid metal would open up the huge potential for fur-
ther theranostic applications. Actually, other polymers or hydrogels
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
Fig. 13. Schematic illustration of the synergetic treatment of hyperthermia therapy and chemotherapy in breast cancer with liquid metal and drug-loaded mesoporous silica
hybrid (DOX-MS/LM). Reproduced with permission [45].
can also be considered as injectable materials for tumor therapy or
combined therapy [205].
4. Injection-enabled technologies and allied devices
Due to the use of liquid metal involving various types and
sizes, the fabrication of liquid metal materials would thus be clas-
sified according to specific applications. In this part, we concen-
trate on a discussion about the injection-enabled liquid metal fab-
rication technologies and allied devices, including direct injection
for preparing bulk liquid metal materials and 3D printing meth-
ods, fluidic injection, and microfluidic flow-focusing injection for
preparing microscale and nanoscale liquid metal droplets.
4.1. Injection of bulk liquid metals
4.1.1. Direct injection
It is straightforward to use a syringe to directly inject into in
vivo defects to form amorphous shapes conformably filling into the
irregular sites or into microfluidic channels to form electrodes. Sev-
eral studies are utilizing liquid metal electrodes to stimulate the
activity of neural cells [211].
While if the operation involves liquid metal with high melting
points, the specific device is needed to guarantee the process that
the bulk liquid metal is heated up and kept warm at constant op-
eration temperature in a liquid state and on the other hand, the
injection syringe can withstand the high temperature. For example,
Yi et al. proposed a scheme of a tailor-made syringe composed of a
syringe and a heating cover to regulate the temperature of the in-
ner liquid metals [43]. This method ensures injecting liquid metal
in a liquid state and filling the in vivo cavities. While the injected
liquid metal will experience a solidify process during which they
can be shaped into different morphologies. Making full use of this
solidification process, 3D printing of liquid metal objects is easy to
achieve.
23
4.1.2. Injection for 3D printing
3D printing technology attracts broad interest in recent years,
which usually involves materials like polymers [212]. Generally,
due to the limitation of high melting points, traditional metals re-
quire complicated procedures and sophisticated equipment in 3D
printing. Metals or alloys with melting points lower than 300 °C
and higher than room temperature, allowing constructing free-
standing stable structures, would innovate the field and be used
in the fabrication of conductive 3D objects or biomaterials. Wang
et al. proposed a 3D printing technology in liquid phase with
bismuth-based liquid metal as alloy ink and provided the model
of the corresponding device (Fig. 14a) [99]. Liquid cooling with
water or ethanol is adopted to fasten the cooling rate and pre-
vent over oxidation in the air for liquid droplets. To avoid solidi-
fication of the Bi35 In48.6 Sn15.9 Zn0.4 alloy, an aluminum alloy jacket
was covered outside of the injection tube, heated by a constan-
tan resistance wire and monitored with a temperature controller.
A nitrogen cylinder provided the pressure for pushing out the liq-
uid metal ink into the liquid cooling pool. Several two or three-
dimensional structures were successfully fabricated via this liquid
injection technology, including rods, cone and cylinder objects. Im-
portant factors including the types and temperature of the cooling
fluids, air pressure in the syringe, the inner diameter of the nee-
dle, injection speed and the natural properties of the alloy ink that
have an impact on the size of resulting droplets and the structure
were also discussed. To improve the properties of the fabricated
objects, the ink could adopt gallium-based, bismuth-based, or liq-
uid metal composite either with other metal particles or combined
with other nonmetal materials [213]. Further, a schematic descrip-
tion of the future liquid metal 3D printer was illustrated with a
syringe needle array and a computer to adjust and regulate the
whole fabricated process (Fig. 14b). This novel approach provides
an easy fabrication way for constructing 3D liquid metal biomate-
rials, which could be very useful in the future biomedical applica-
tions.
24 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
Fig. 14. 3D printing devices. (a) Schematic illustration of the experimental apparatus used in 3D liquid metal printing. (b) Schematic illustration of the injection needle array
of future 3D printer. Reproduced with permission [99].
4.2. Preparation of liquid metal droplets
Preparation of liquid metal droplets in varied scales from mil-
limeter to nanometer, displays versatile roles in diverse biomedi-
cal applications, including flexible electronics, bioelectrodes, elec-
trochemical sensors, microfluidic pumps, valves, switches, soft mo-
tors, 3D microelectrodes or 3D materials, micro-electro-mechanical
systems (MEMS), catalysts, drug delivery and tumor therapy [84,
156, 214, 215]. Due to the unique soft nature, which is different
from the synthesis of most rigid nanomaterials from the molecular
level, the preparation of liquid metal droplets or nanoparticles pri-
marily adopts top-down methods, which includes direct injection,
flow-focusing, mold patterning, shearing liquids into complex par-
ticles and sonication with the aid of syringes, microfluidic devices
or ultrasonic equipment to provide disruptive force [216]. In this
section, we focus our interest on the injection-enabled technology
for droplets fabrication in varied sizes and emphasis syringe nee-
dle or capillary injection, on-chip flow-focusing ejection in the mi-
crofluidic system and their allied devices.
4.2.1. Fluidic injection
To accomplish large-scale liquid metal droplets fabrication, Yu
et al. utilized a syringe, taking advantage of the autonomous break-
ing behavior, to directly inject liquid metal into an aqueous solu-
tion to prepare microspheres [207]. Compared to water or oil sys-
tem, when ejected from a small aperture, liquid metal with high
surface tension would quickly break up into microdroplets under
the effect of Plateau-Rayleigh instability [217]. The injection de-
vice composed of three parts, including a syringe filled with liquid
gallium, an aqueous solution, and a petri dish to collect droplets
(Fig. 15a). In order to prevent the collision and coalescence of these
microdroplets into large ones, different surfactants are added to
the solution to stabilize the droplets. Through injection, a large
number of droplets could be prepared readily. Through observa-
tion with a high-speed camera, the formation process of the liq-
uid metal droplets would go through five procedures, including
a stream, neck appearing, shuttle shape, irregular and spherical
shapes.
Further, several key factors, such as the size of the pinhead,
viscosity, and density of the fluid solution, injecting velocity and
types of the surfactants are also analyzed and discussed. The di-
ameters of droplets would decrease with the increase of the flow
velocity and reduction on the inner size of the needle. By using
a needle with different diameters, the average droplet size var-
ied between 172 μm and 590 μm (Fig. 15b, 15c). The resulting
droplets can be stored for a long time when solidified under low
temperature. The droplets fabricated in this way can be used to
form a porous metallic foam, which may have potential applica-
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722 25

Fig. 15. Methods and devices of fluidic injection. (a) Device for the fabrication of liquid metal droplets with a syringe. (b) Photograph of liquid metal droplets fabricated
via a syringe with a pinhead of 0.41 mm (left) and the diameter distribution of the sample (right). (c) Photograph of liquid metal droplets fabricated via a syringe with
a pinhead of 0.41 mm (left) and the diameter distribution of the sample (right). Reproduced with permission [218]. (d) A large number of small liquid metal autonomous
running motors. Reproduced with permission [89]. (e) Schematic illustration of the electro-hydrodynamic shooting device, the droplet motion (left, bottom) and the force
analysis (right, bottom). Reproduced with permission [219].

tions in battery fabrication and thermal management. Using this
method, Sheng et al. fabricated thousands of tiny running motors
in NaOH solution through direct injection of the freedom running
large droplets (Fig. 15d) [89]. This direct injection method has a
variety of advantages, such as low cost, high efficiency, and sim-
ple operation. While the large size distribution span a wide range
caused by the uneven injection velocity and the limited needle size
might restrict its applications.
To further reduce the physical labor, an electro-hydrodynamic
method was proposed by Fang et al. to substitute the mechani-
cal efforts by hands with electric energy (Fig. 15e) [219]. The cath-
ode of the DC charge was connected with a liquid metal container
and the anode was linked with the NaOH solution. Then a cap-
illary tube filled with liquid metal served as a bridge of the two
fluids. Under the non-uniform electric stimulation, the charge dis-
tribution on the surface of the liquid metal would change, push-
ing liquid metal to transform and move forward to the anode. Due
to the high surface tension, liquid metal would quickly form into
a sphere state in NaOH solution. The automatic ejection of liquid
metal was observed from cathode to anode.
Further, the influence of the capillary size, the magnitude of
voltage on the ejection velocity and the resulting sizes of the
droplets was also discussed. This electro-hydrodynamic method
presents a new approach of continuous fabrication of discrete liq-
uid metal droplets in a large quantity under a low voltage. The
droplets’ size was highly dependent on the capillary nozzle, which
potentially provides a way to decrease the size of droplets.
4.2.2. Microfluidic flow-focusing
The flow focusing method has been widely used in applica-
tions, including the analysis of the fluidic property and the produc-
tion of the microparticles. To produce liquid metal droplets with
smaller size and monodispersity, a flow focusing method was pro-
posed based on liquid metal and another one or two immiscible
continuous-phase solution going through a microscale orifice in
PDMS-based microfluidic devices [208]. Thelen et al. designed a
microfluidic device with two inlets for liquid metal and a mixture
of glycerol and water, and one outlet for droplets production [209].
Three stream fluids focused on the flow focusing orifice and the
central liquid metal stream would be broken into small droplets
and pushed to flow forward by the other two streams (Fig. 16a).
Results have shown that the formation of oxide film on the sur-
face and the additive PVA-doped surfactants in the continuous-
phase stream play an important role in stabilizing these micro-
spheres (Fig. 16b). Through removal of the oxide skin, these liq-
uid metal droplets can be recycled and reused. Taking advantage
of the oxide skin, Hutter et al. successfully prepared non-spherical
droplets with a micro-rice morphology covered by a rigid skin
[220]. Through regulating the recipe of silicone oil, shape tun-
able microdroplets can be easily fabricated with a microfluidic ap-
proach, which holds potential prospects in MEMS devices.
However, due to the influence of high interfacial tension, liq-
uid metal droplets were usually formed with another high viscos-
ity continuous-phase fluid and extra efforts are paid on in separat-
ing and transferring droplets to an aqueous solution for further us-
26 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722

Fig. 16. Methods and devices of microfluidic flow-focusing. (a) A typical micrograph of a flow-focusing device. Three streams composed of the liquid metal stream and
two continuous-phase solution are forced to an orifice to produce liquid metal droplets. (b) The prepared liquid metal droplets (b1) and the time-lapse photographs of
these microspheres stabilized by an oxide skin and PVA after addition of HCl, t = 2 min (b2), t = 22.5 h (b3), and sample after centrifuging for 1 min at 20 0 0 rpm
(b4). Reproduced with permission [209]. (c) Schematic illustration of the microfluidic chip for continuous generation and transfer of liquid metal droplet to NaOH solution.
(d) Photographs captured via high-speed camera recorded the transition process of Galinstan droplet from glycerol into NaOH solution, including approach (d1), reaching
the interface (d2), deforming when crossing the interface (d3, d4), transferring into NaOH flow (d5, d6). Reproduced with permission [221]. (e) Schematic illustration of a
monolithic chip combined the process of continuous production of Galinstan microdroplets in glycerol and transferring into secondary liquid. Scale bar is 200 μm. Reproduced
with permission [223]. Schematic illustration of the on-chip nanoparticle production platform (f) and its working mechanism under acoustic waves that the microdroplets
are formed at the T-junction and later gradually broken into nanoparticles when travelling along the microchannel (g). (h) Snapshots of the formation and the subsequent
breaking down of a microdroplet into nanoparticles with time within the microchannel. The scale bar is 1 cm. (i) The proposed scheme of the conjugation between bPEG
molecules and EGaIn particle. (j) TEM photographs of the EGaIn nanoparticles coated with bPEG. Reproduced with permission [210].

age. To solve this issue, Gol et al. designed a monolithic chip com-
bined with the process of continuous production of Galinstan mi-
crodroplets in glycerol and transferring into secondary liquid like
NaOH solution (Fig. 16c) [221]. High-speed photos have shown that
liquid metal droplets could approach and transit from high viscous
fluid to a low viscous solution due to the existence of the hydro-
dynamic force (Fig. 16d). Theoretical simulation, as well as experi-
mental results also demonstrated that the critical factors including
hydrodynamic force and the surface tension play a crucial role in
transferring across the fluid-fluid interface [222].
To achieve variable sizes of droplets with fixed microfluidic de-
vices without changing the viscosity of the continuous fluid and
the flow rates, Tang et al. proposed a novel idea to quickly regulate
the interfacial tension of the liquid metal through electric stimula-
tion (Fig. 16e) [223]. The mechanism was revealed via the electro-
chemical and electrocapillarity effect to modulate the resulting size
 X. Sun, B. Yuan and L. Sheng et al. / Applied Materials Today 20 (2020) 100722
and the microdroplets with a diameter smaller than the width of
the orifice were first fabricated in this technique.
Generally, the formation of liquid metal particles requires the
use of a high viscous fluid, offering a shearing force to pinch off
the liquid metal stream. In order to improve the fabrication pro-
cess directly in aqueous solution, Tang et al. employed an ultra-
sonic bath providing extra oscillating shear force to facilitate the
formation process of microdroplets without the need of the high
flow rate and the high viscous liquid (Fig. 16f, 16g) [210]. With the
flow of the continuous phase fluid, the microdroplets would fur-
ther be broken into nanodroplets in a serpentine-shaped channel
under the effect of acoustic waves (Fig. 16h). Through conjugating
with trithiocarbonate groups on the bPEG polymers, liquid metal
nanoparticles are enabled biostability and biocompatibility, mak-
ing it easy for further functionalization with other molecules like
fluorescence group or antibody, thus providing a nanoplatform for
further biomedical applications (Fig. 16i, 16j).
Compared to fluidic injection, the microfluidic flow-focusing
method enables the production of liquid metal droplets with more
uniform distribution and smaller size from micrometer to nanome-
ter. The prepared microfluidic device and several influence fac-
tors, which might affect the resulting size of liquid metal droplets
should be noted. Especially, electric field exerts as a positive tuning
force to the size of liquid metal.
5. Discussion and perspectives
With various combined advantages of leading electrical, ther-
mal, mechanical, biosafe and in particular injectable merits, liq-
uid metal enabled injection technology shows promising prospects
in broad diagnosis and therapeutic areas and would innovate the
biomedical fields. As surveyed above, liquid metals have displayed
diverse applications in tissue engineering, bioimaging, nerve con-
nection, thermal conversion, microfluidic pumps and smart robots
and so on. However, opportunity accompanies with a challenge.
This novel technology still faces many challenges ahead. For ex-
ample, in the fluidic injection, the operation is mainly achieved by
hands and the fact that the injectable speed and the uniform of the
liquid metal stream are hard to be guaranteed in this way needs
further investigation. So the development of more sophisticated
and reliable devices is of great urgency. It is the truth that the
injection provides a straightforward approach. However, accuracy
should not be sacrificed in this way. The oxide skin offers liquid
metal with the possibility to shape its morphology and regulate
the mechanical property. While the slim film would increase the
viscosity and make it adhere more easily to the inner wall of the
needle, thus decreasing the precise dose due to the residue. One
possible solution is to remove the oxide skin before injection via
acidic or alkaline solution. Of course, fabrication of injectable sy-
ringe integrated with chemical pretreatment or oxygen resistance
would be better, which can at the same time achieve precise quan-
titative control.
Benefiting from the low transition temperature from solid to
liquid, liquid metal-based materials can achieve mechanical reg-
ulation more easily. By altering the composition and proportion
of these metals, the melting points would change correspondingly.
Beyond that, a combination of liquid metal with other nanoparti-
cles, nonmetal organic materials or construction of a hybrid sys-
tem still leaves plenty of space for researchers to further improve
the physical characteristics, such as mechanical, electrical, viscous
properties.
Malignant tumors, as life-threatening diseases, have attracted
increasing attention both in fundamental research and clinical
practices [224, 225]. Vascular occlusion therapy with macroscopic
liquid metal displays great potential in blocking nutrient supply.
Considering the highly aggressive and variable character in tumor
27
development, single treatment model is not enough to destroy the
whole tumor. Synergistic treatment model of occlusion therapy,
chemotherapy, photothermal therapy and radiotherapy should be
considered in future tumor treatment. In particular, compared to
bulk liquid metal, micro/nano-scale liquid metal particles with de-
sirable characteristics, rendering them accessible to hybrid or form
conjugation with other non-metal materials, are suitable to ac-
complish the theranostic function and the combined therapy es-
pecially tackling complicated issues. In this way, we believe that
micro/nano-scale liquid metal particles would be doomed to dis-
play a crucial part for various biomedical applications. Till now, the
fabrication method via sonication would lead to a wide distribu-
tion range and particle size is hard to achieve below 100 nm. From
this point of view, the improvement of the uniform distribution in
smaller sizes and separation method calls for new technology and
more endeavors.
Last but not least, the toxicity issue is always an essential fac-
tor for implants. Several studies till now have demonstrated the
biosafety of bulk liquid metal and nanoparticles. However, research
on the long term influence of foreign materials on the human body
is still lacking. Mainly, materials and the accompanying affected
characters regarding electrical and mechanical aspects under var-
ious perturbations of physiological change still need a series of re-
searches to test and give clear evidence.
Overall, along with the outstanding advantages, recent advances
and injection-enabled biomedical applications, technologies, and
devices based on liquid metal alloys are systematically reviewed
and interpreted. It is expected that such novel materials and their
allied technologies would play an ever increasingly important role
in future biomedical and biomedicine fields.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This work was financially supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China Key Project under Grant No. 51890893
and 91748206, the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(No. 81701850), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant
number 2018M641486), the Key Laboratory of Cryogenics Foun-
dation of TIPC, CAS (No.CRYOQN201709), the Frontier Project of
the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Presidential Foundation of
the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Beijing Municipal Science &
Technology Commission research fund (No. Z17110 0 0 0 04170 04).
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