A glue that conducts electricity could replace solder

For the occasional solderer who's a little bit on the sloppy side -- cough, like me, cough -- this could be a real godsend.

It's a glue that conducts electricity. It was developed by Hanchen Huang, a professor at Northeastern University, and two students, according to the article informing us about this product. See Researchers’ Metallic Glue may Stick it to Soldering and Welding. Here's a how-it-works excerpt:

“It’s like welding or sol­dering but without the heat,” says Huang, who is pro­fessor and chair in the Depart­ment of Mechan­ical and Indus­trial Engineering.

“Both ‘metal’ and ‘glue’ are familiar terms to most people, but their com­bi­na­tion is new and made pos­sible by unique prop­er­ties of metallic nanorods–infinitesimally small rods with metal cores that we have coated with the ele­ment indium on one side and galium on the other. These coated rods are arranged along a sub­strate like angled teeth on a comb: There is a bottom ‘comb’ and a top ‘comb.’ We then inter­lace the ‘teeth.’ When indium and galium touch each other, they form a liquid. The metal core of the rods acts to turn that liquid into a solid. The resulting glue pro­vides the strength and thermal/electrical con­duc­tance of a metal bond. We recently received a new pro­vi­sional patent for this devel­op­ment through North­eastern University.”

It's not clear how they get the nanorods lined up just right so that they interlace, but hopefully they do it without requiring much user involvement in the process.

Meanwhile, here's a link to their company: mesoglue.com. And here's a link to their introductory video.

If it works the way they say it will this would indeed be a Super Glue.