As an emerging multi-functional material, gallium based room temperature liquid metal attracts particular attentions in a variety of applications in recent years due to its extraordinary mobility and deformability. However, without reliable controllability, the liquid metal greatly reduces its potential applications in many fields. In this study, we proposed a new design of the functional liquid metal obtained by magnetic modification of pure liquid metal with copper-iron alloy nano-particles. The functional liquid metal droplet exhibits similar appearance, mobility, deformability and continuous electrowetting effect in alkaline solutions to those of the pure liquid metal droplet under external electrical field. Meanwhile, it enables to be controlled and manipulated by an external magnetic field precisely and quickly. The surface free energy generated during the wetting process exceeds energy barrier during the magnetic modification process, which allows the copper-iron alloy particles to suspend into the liquid metal and form the functional liquid metal. The mobility and deformability of the functional liquid metal droplet are verified by manipulation tasks in cross-linked channels and sloped channel when applying the integration of the electrical and magnetic fields. The remarkable features of the functional liquid metal represent extensive potentials toward the design of future intelligent soft robots.
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