Liquid metal renaissance points to wearables, soft robots, and new materials | Hacker News Reader

Liquid metal renaissance points to wearables, soft robots, and new materials

pnas.org

91 pointspseudolus18 comments

> That skin can lead to some curious behaviors. His lab has found that when a drop of gallium-indium alloy sits in a strong alkali solution, applying voltage causes the skin to form around the drop. The skin acts as one of the world’s most effective surfactants—chemicals that alter the drop’s surface tension—by turning the drop’s spherical shape into a snowflake-like fractal pattern.

Links to this paper (there's an image): Oxidation-Mediated Fingering in Liquid Metals

Collin B. Eaker, David C. Hight, John D. O'Regan, Michael D. Dickey, Karen E. Daniels (Submitted on 8 Mar 2017)

https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.03011

I've tried to use liquid metal several times over the years, mostly in wearables projects.

Every time there has been a bunch of red tape on the LQMT side in determining if this was a project they wanted to take part in and, if so, how we should move forward.

That slow moving might work if LQMT is the only way to move forward, but for most projects it's more advisable to just go with MIM, Machining, or something else.

My understanding of LQMT is that they have a special amorphous alloy/production method. As far as I'm aware, the "liquid" moniker is simply marketing.

The article seems to be talking about applications of metal alloys that are genuinely liquid at STP. Not really related?

I still have samples of liquid metal pre apple from when OQO was attempting to mold with it. Stuff is magic every time I run across some of it buried under junk it just grabs the eye. only thing Apple cast with it was SIM card removers.

The room temperature catalyst data looks pretty promising. Not sure of the feasibility of building out huge electrocatalytic CO2 scrubbing capacity, or if there is enough gallium in the world to actually do this.

I've been holding a lot of LQMT stock ... I'm ready for this to move into the mainstream.

:( sell.

they already signed exclusive, worldwide, paid-for, resellable, rigths licensing with many companies (even apple, which always plays bad with providers). not sure what their end game is (production? they can't be that crazy), but definitely will not turn a profit from their trade-secret alloys recipies.

>even apple

The agreement only lasted a few years. If Apple were to use a new material for production that requires to be sold in 40M Unit per year ( iPhone Pro ) they would have tested it in small patch for production in Apple Watch. ( Stainless Steel, Ceramics, Titanium )

The Sim card ejector in every iPhone box, take a closer look at it ;)

Doesn’t come with the phone anymore though

This looks like a penny stock. What are the chances that something like this actually takes off and gets a high market cap?

Me too. I still have a Kingston USB drive with the case made of liquid metal. I was impressed, did some reading and then bought a bunch of stock. Only went down from there. Not sure what prevents them from having more success.

Do you have a photo? I'm not sure I understand what the case looks like.

T1000 when?

I wonder how much was publicly known about this technology in 1990 or so. This is a case where I’d be quite impressed if it was based on anything real. I’m probably more often disappointed by the oft-abused deus-ex-machina (quantum, AI, wormholes, hacking, etc), but sometimes it’s really well done and way ahead of the zeitgeist’s tech imagination.

“Hackers” is more realistic now than back when. See Maersk cargo ship hacking...

There might be something here with respect to field visualization -- magnetic, electric, voltage, rf, sound or other...

The catalytic reduction of CO2 using cerium loaded liquid metal at room temperature in a single step process is quite novel, really exciting . . . .

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