Liquid metal will wet to most metallic surfaces. Specifically though, room-temperature liquid metal can be very reactive with certain metals. Liquid metal can dissolve most metals; however, at moderate temperatures, only some are slightly soluble, such as sodium, potassium, gold, magnesium, lead, nickel and mercury. Gallium is corrosive to all metals except tungsten and tantalum, which have a high resistance to corrosion, more so than niobium, titanium and molybdenum. Similar to indium, gallium and gallium-containing alloys have the ability to wet to many non-metallic surfaces such as glass and quartz. Gently rubbing the alloy into the surface may help induce wetting. However,
Liquid metal embrittlement is seen in cases where alloy additions elements have saturated the grain boundaries of the solid metal. The hardness and deformation behaviour of the solid metal affect its susceptibility to LME. Generally, harder metals are more severely embrittled. Grain size greatly influences LME. Solids with larger grains are more severely embrittled and the fracture stress varies inversely with the square root of grain diameter. Also the brittle to ductile transition temperature is increased by increasing grain size. The interfacial energy between the solid and liquid metals and the grain boundary energy of the solid metal greatly influence LME. These energies