Liquid Wire, a Beaverton, Ore.-based early-stage startup producing patent-pending high conductivity gels for fabricating wearable sensors, power and signal transmission on a wide range of textile materials, received a follow-on seed-stage investment from the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI).
ONAMI’s investment follows its initial stake in Liquid Wire, which served to validate MetalGel™’s value proposition for multiple segments of the technical textiles market and funded the company’s initial marketing program. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.
The company inends to use the funds to commercialize its patent-pending MetalGel™ technology into the $175B technical textiles market.
Led by founder and Managing Director Mark Ronay, Liquid Wire is advancing MetalGel™, a gallium-indium alloy – a non-toxic room temperature liquid metal – subjected to a proprietary chemical process to induce the inorganic analogue of gelification. This process creates a high viscosity and easily wettable metal fluid printed and encapsulated onto the surface of elastic membranes. MetalGel™ can be patterned directly onto the surface of elastic membranes to form electroactive structures. The linear change in conductivity of MetalGel™ under tension or compression enables the incorporation of complex conductors, 2D and 3D sensors, and RF antennas into the full range of technical textiles for consumer, commercial and industrial uses.
FinSMEs
06/02/2018