It sounds like something out of Terminator 2: Judgement Day: a liquid metal that can be morphed at a whim and could be used to create self-healing electronics.

But this isn’t science-fiction — and it’s also not quite as advanced as the T-1000 robot from that film, which could turn into liquid and then simply return to its previous form. Researchers from North Carolina State University have found a way to control the surface tension of liquid metals by using low voltages, which could lead to vast improvements in electronics, according to a Gizmag report.

The team used an alloy of gallium and indium. Although indium has a fairly high melting point of 312 degrees Fahrenheit, gallium melts at room temperature, and when the two are mixed together to form an alloy, it takes on the melting temperature of gallium.

This alloy has a very high surface tension — about 500 millinewtons per meter — meaning that when sitting on a the surface, it will form an almost perfect sphere. By applying a small voltage, the surface tension lowers and it flattens out until the voltage is removed. By applying different voltages, the surface tension is changed in different ways.

That means the alloy could be made to flow into capillaries or molds, taking on a variety of contours, including that of an antenna, which would make it a tunable antenna that could be changed into a different shape depending on what you’d like to transmit.

Antennas that change their shape have been developed before, but only through mechanical methods rather than through electrical impulses.

The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.