Washington Post Article on Self-Healing “Terminator Skin”

Check out the recent article in the Washington Post [link] on SML’s new “Terminator Skin”. The skin is made up of soft and stretchable circuitry that spontaneously restores its electrical connections when damaged. The material is composed of microscopic droplets of liquid metal (a eutectic alloy of gallium and indium; EGaIn) embedded in a soft silicone matrix. A scribe is used to selectively rupture the droplets and cause them to form electrically conductive pathways within the silicone. When the material is cut, torn, or punctured, droplets around the damaged area spontaneously rupture to form new conductive pathways.

This work was recently reported in Nature Materials and is now available online [publisher link]. You can also read more about this work at Phys.org [link] and the Washington Post [link].