Undercooled Metal Technology for Flexible Electronics

Undercooled metal technology was developed that features liquid metal (in this case, Field's metal, an alloy of bismuth, indium, and tin) trapped below its melting point in polished, oxide shells, creating particles about 10-millionths of a meter across. When the shells are broken — with mechanical pressure or chemical dissolving — the metal inside flows and solidifies, creating a heat-free weld or, in this case, printing conductive, metallic lines and traces on all kinds of materials, from a concrete wall to a leaf.