Recent Progress of Liquid Metal-Based Flexible Nanostructures for Smart Textiles

Abstract

Smart textiles are emerging as next-generation garments developed by scientific and industrial communities and are attracting increasing attention for their ability to provide real-time responses to external conditions or stimuli. Liquid metal (LM)-based smart textiles are widely used in sensors, wearable electronics, and flexible devices due to LMs’ exceptional fluidity, high conductivity, and inherent flexibility in ambient conditions. This review presents an overview of the different fabrication methods and functionalities of LMs in smart textiles, covering design principles, manufacturing processes, working mechanisms, and applications. The characteristics of LMs that make them an ideal platform for smart textiles are systematically explored. The review classifies and discusses the main application areas, such as flexible sensors for physiological monitoring, thermal management, and energy storage. Additionally, various advanced fabrication techniques are explored that enable patterning of LM nanodroplets on textile substrates, ranging from additive preparation and direct writing to sonication-supported dispersion and microfluidic shaping. This review seeks to promote the development of commercially feasible wearable technology by analyzing the difficulties that can arise in daily-life use.