Oxide-mediated mechanisms of gallium foam generation and stabilization during shear mixing in air.

Kong, Wilson; Shah, Najam Ul Hassan; Neumann, Taylor V; Vong, Man Hou; Kotagama, Praveen; Dickey, Michael D; Wang, Robert Y; Rykaczewski, Konrad · Soft Matter · 2020

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Foaming of gallium-based liquid metals improves their processability and-seemingly in contrast to processing of other metal foams-can be achieved through shear-mixing in air without addition of solid microparticles. Resolving this discrepancy, systematic processing-structure-property characterization demonstrates that many crumpled oxide particles are generated prior to air bubble accumulation.