Surface energy-directed assembly of liquid metal particles for intelligent wearable electronics

Liquid metals (LMs) are promising for flexible electronics owing to their high electrical conductivity and inherent room temperature deformability. However, their high surface tension poses major technical barriers for high-resolution patterning. While conventional pre-patterned metal seeding layers can enable deterministic LM patterning, this approach inevitably adds redundant fabrication steps and increases process complexity. Here, we develop a seeding-layer-free surface energy-directed assembly process based on ultrasonically dispersed, sodium alginate-stabilized LM particle dispersions, which enables high-precision LM patterning on various stretchable substrates. The fabricated strain sensors exhibit <200 ms response and >1,000-cycle stability, while the LM electrode arrays paired with a convolutional neural network achieve 94% accuracy in gesture recognition. This work establishes a high-precision, environmentally benign, and broadly applicable platform for next-generation LM-based flexible and stretchable electronics.