Liquid Metal Enabled Electrobiology: A Generalized Easy Going Way to Tackle Disease Challenges

Abstract

In this article, a new conceptual biomedical engineering strategy to tackle modern disease challenges, termed as liquid metal enabled electrobiology, is proposed. This generalized and easy going way is based on the physiological fact that specially administrated electricity would induce a series of subsequent desired biological effects, either shortly, transitional or permanently. Owing high compliance within any part of the biological tissues, the liquid metal would aid to mold a pervasive way to treat physiological or psychological diseases. As highly conductive and non-toxic multifunctional flexible materials, such liquid metals (LMs) consist of the core to generate any requested electric treating fields (ETFields) which can adapt to various sites inside the human body. The basic mechanisms of electrobiology in delivering electricity to the target tissues and then inducing expected outputs for disease treatment are interpreted. The methods toward realizing soft and conformable electronics based on liquid metal are illustrated. Further, a group of typical disease challenges were taken to illustrate the basic strategies to perform liquid metal electrobiology therapy, which include but are not limited to: tissue electronics, brain disorder, immunotherapy, neural functional recovery, muscle stimulation, skin rejuvenation, cosmetology and dieting, artificial organs, cardiac pacing and cancer therapy etc. Some practical issues involved in the electrobiology for future disease therapy were discussed. Perspective along this direction to incubate an easy-going biomedical tool for health care was pointed out.