The liquid terminator T-1000 from the cult science fiction film "Terminator 2" is not such a fantasy, say physicists from Australia, who developed semiconductor circuits from liquid metals. Of course, there is still a long way to go before an artificially intelligent humanoid killer robot made of liquid metal, but the invention of Australian scientists can be considered as the first steps in this direction, writes the scientific publication Nature Communications.
“We were able to make individual droplets of liquid metal move and change shape simply by changing the chemistry of the solution they were immersed in. That is, the liquid metal changed its shape under the action of acids, salts and bases of a certain concentration, without the use of any mechanical or electrical forces,”says staff at RMIT University in Sydney.
Using this principle, scientists under the leadership of Professor Kurosh Kalantar-zade managed to build a number of moving mechanisms made of liquid metal, in particular, autonomous switches and pumps that operated thanks to the liquid in which they were immersed.
Drops of liquid metal, as scientists note, are somewhat reminiscent of human cells - they have a pure metal core that conducts current, as well as an outer shell formed by a metal oxide, which, in turn, has semiconducting properties.
Kolesnikov Andrey
