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 rate sensitive. Temperature also affects the kinetics of LME. An increase in strain rate increases the upper limit temperature as well as the crack propagation rate. In most metal couples LME does not occur below a threshold stress level. Testing typically involves tensile specimens but more sophisticated testing using fracture mechanics specimens is also performed. Many theories have been proposed for LME. The major ones are listed below; All of these models, with the exception of Robertson, utilize the concept of an adsorption-induced surface energy lowering of the solid metal as the central cause of LME. They have succeeded in