Liquid metal creates wires that stretch 8 times their original length

December 20, 2012

The tube, filled with liquid metal, can be stretched many times its original length (credit: Shu Zhu et al./NC State)


The wires can be used for everything from headphones to phone chargers, and have potential uses in electronic textiles.


“Previous efforts to create stretchable wires focused on embedding metals or other electrical conductors in elastic polymers; … increasing the amount of metal improves the conductivity of the composite, but diminishes its elasticity,” says Dr. Michael Dickey, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research.

