Discussion About 'Liquid Metal' & Its Uses In Engineering

Replies

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  silverscorpion

  I thought Mercury was the liquid metal 😕
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  Ramani Aswath

  The_Big_K

  I've been stumbling upon the term 'Liquid Metal' many times these days and found out that it's a new alloy on the block that's finding growing applications in electronics, gadgets, aeronautical engineering and so on. Here's some more information about Liquid Metal: #-Link-Snipped-#
  It's even being said that this alloy will be used by Apple in their next path-breaking device (which we don't know yet, but iPhone 5 may have Liquid Metal body). Can metallurgy engineers throw some light on it?

  The so called liquid metals are likely to be metallic glasses. The common or garden glass that we use daily is in fact a 'supercooled' liquid, though it is rigid and can shatter on shock. It has an amorphous structure.
  All metals and alloys are crystalline, which restricts some performance. Metallic glasses are relatively new kid on the block. (My wife use to work on those in a CSIR lab a few years back.)
  
  These have some unusual properties. However, as SS said Mercury is the best known liquid metal as also Gallium (at least in the tropics). There is little you can use them for except in thermometers, position sensitive switches and such.
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  Gurjap

  I am thinking homemade custom parts for hobbyists.