Recent advances and future prospects of flexible and wearable applications based on liquid metal demands

Liquid metals have garnered significant attention from researchers in recent years, and possess fascinating characteristics originating from their simultaneous metallic and liquid qualities. Their high fluidity and conductivity make liquid metals promising for broad prospects in many fields, such as composites, aerospace, flexible electronics, and biomedical devices. However, the study of liquid metals still not forming an integrated research system nowadays is neglected by the wider research community. The question of "how to improve the basic performance of flexible electronic products and endow them with more unique functions" has emerged. In this review, we provide an overview of the processing methods for liquid metal based flexible devices, with a particular emphasis on various applications based on the conductivity, such as wearable sensors, controllable switches, flexible circuits, devices based on the magnetic effect, joule heaters, and electromagnetic shielding devices. This work comprehensively introduces the application directions of liquid metals in conductivity and aims to offer innovative insights and inspiration for future research endeavors in liquid metal based flexible devices and systems.