Liquid metals can be fairly ample atom thieves. Scientists use a liquid metal technique to selectively remove elements from a block of well-mixed metals and create intricate structures. However,researchers didn't know how the technique worked. Now, scientists know that due to the preferential mixing of the soon-to-be-removed element with the liquid metal, and the uniform solid alloy is transformed into two phases in a manner that is similar to what is seen in cooling a hot mixture of oil and water. Then,depending on the initial composition of the alloy and diffusion, the liquid metal can infiltrate the alloy resulting in two interpenetrating connected phases, or main to metal nanostructures with desirable properties.
Source: phys.org