Glass-to-metal seal absorb the stresses from thermal expansion mismatches. Due to its very low vapor pressure, indium finds use in glass-metal seals used in vacuum technology. Gallium is a soft metal with melting point at 30 °C. It readily wets glasses and most metals and can be used for seals that can be assembled/disassembled by just slight heating. It can be used as a liquid seal up to high temperatures or even at lower temperatures when alloyed with other metals (e.g. as galinstan). Mercury is a metal liquid at normal temperature. It was used as the earliest glass-to-metal seal and is still
Liquid metal ion source allowed to flow to the apex of a sharp needle. Most focused ion beam instruments use a liquid-metal ion sources (LMIS) often with gallium. In a gallium LMIS, gallium metal is placed in contact with a tungsten needle and heated gallium wets the tungsten and flows to the tip of the needle where the opposing forces of surface tension and electric field produce the cusp shaped Taylor cone. The tip radius of this cone is ~2 nm. The electric field at this small tip is typically greater than 1 x 10 V/cm and causes ionization and field emission of the