You could use string.chars().mapToObj(e -> new String(new char[] {e}));, though this is quite lengthy and only works with java 8. Here are a few more methods:
string.split(""); (Has an extra whitespace character at the beginning of the array if used before Java 8)
string.split("|");
string.split("(?!^)");
Arrays.toString(string.toCharArray()).substring(1, string.length() * 3 + 1).split(", ");
The last one is just unnecessarily long, it's just for fun!
