The era of shape-shifting electronic circuits capable of self-assembly is not far away. A team of engineers working in Australia and Switzerland has modified the shape and movements of a liquid metal drop by flexing the acidity content of its watery environment. The team working on this project was led by Melbourne’s RMIT University’s professor, Kourosh Lalatar-Zadeh, as per him the completion of this experiment will support dynamic elastic electronic components that move automatically to form new circuits rather than staying stuck in a single arrangement.
It is true that the T-1000 metal from the Terminator is still a fantasy, however, the team decided to take a few characteristics from that metal and infuse them in new liquid to form new kind of electric circuits. The main materials used for this purpose included gallium alloys which are both conductive and malleable. But can it be manipulated without coming in tangible limit? They did this by popping the droplets of galinstan alloy in water and then adjusting the salt concentration nd water’s pH to observe the reaction of galinstan droplet.
They discovered that the droplet edges were deformed on the inner end during the acidic bath and imbibed outside when processed through base. Addition of Sodium Chloride only increased the particular behaviour in acid and base. The switches were produced using hydrogen chloride as acid and sodium hydroxide as base as well as salt. The pumps, on the other hands, were produced by propelling galinstan droplets near the fluid-filled tubes.
Galinstan is a totally non-toxic substance and is used in thermometers these days. The day is not far when this technology will form basis of 3-D electronic displays and devices that can form or deform as per requirement. Kalanter-zadeh is still looking forward to find a technology that can be used in formation of 3-D liquid metal humanoid like the one showed in terminator.
Filed Under: News
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