The new form of liquid/solid hybrid has practical applications in heat-free soldering and electronic circuit damage repair.

The discovery of this new metallic form was made when researchers looked for a way to prevent liquid metals from returning to their solid state, even at temperatures below the point at which they normally solidify. Known as "undercooling,", the technique has often been used to analyze the inner workings of metal structures and to look at alternative ways of processing metals. However, the greatest hurdle in this area is that it is difficult to create significant amounts of stable quantities of these undercooled metals.

Looking at this problem in a different way, the Iowa State team hit on the idea of shrouding minute droplets of liquid metal with a thin, uniform coating that held the liquid inside a sort of particle capsule, to form a balanced batch of particles containing undercooled liquid metal.