The Portland State spinout has raised an undisclosed sum to fund work on a conducive metal fluid that can make elastic materials electroactive.
Liquid Wire, a US-based conducive material developer spun out from Portland State University, has raised an undisclosed sum of seed funding from research centre Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (Onami).
Founded in 2016, Liquid Wire is developing a conducive metal fluid called MetalGel that enables power transmission within a range of elastic materials to run devices such as wearable electronics.
MetalGel, a gallium-indium alloy-based fluid, is the result of a chemical reaction analogue to gelification and can be printed or encapsulated onto other materials so as to create electroactive structures.
Liquid Wire is based on research by Mark Ronay, the spinout’s managing director, who completed a Portland State master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering, along with Bahar Ajdari, a former Portland student researcher now employed by chipmaker Intel.
The funding will enable Liquid Wire to establish customer relationships in the technical textiles segment as it prepares to open a limited-capacity fabrication plant for printing conductors in Beaverton, Oregon.
Liquid Wire has completed the characterisation of MetalGel’s properties and has documented manufacturing processes likely to be used during production.
The company is now developing evaluation kits to demonstrate MetalGel’s usefulness and to facilitate partnerships with academic or industrial researchers.
Onami invested $37,000 in Liquid Wire during the first quarter of 2017. Liquid Wire previously received $5,000 in 2016 for finishing runner-up in the university’s Cleantech Challenge competition.
Skip Rung, president and executive director of Onami, said: “Stretchable conductors are the foundation of the rapidly growing technical textiles market.
“We believe Liquid Wire’s MetalGel uniquely enables stretchable conductors for applications from wearable electronics to high-performance sensors for athletic apparel and 3D pressure sensors.”