Startup Promises "Liquid", Flexibly Reconfigurable Printed Circuit Board

Conductor Tracks Made of Liquid Metal Startup Promises "Liquid", Flexibly Reconfigurable Printed Circuit Board

2026-06-01 From Sebastian Gerstl | Translated by AI 2 min Reading Time

The Californian start-up Itera promises a new approach to fast PCB prototyping: conductor tracks made of liquid metal that can be reshaped within minutes using electrowetting. The approach is designed to speed up hardware iterations.

Reconfigurable printed circuit boards: San Francisco-based Itera has developed an approach to PCB prototyping that it claims makes replacing a PCB as easy as updating software.(Image: Itera) — Reconfigurable printed circuit boards: San Francisco-based Itera has developed an approach to PCB prototyping that it claims makes replacing a PCB as easy as updating software.
(Image: Itera)

The US start-up Itera has presented a technology for reconfigurable printed circuit boards. The conductive tracks are not made of etched copper, but of liquid metal alloys on a glass substrate. According to the company, the conductor tracks can be rearranged in less than a minute using electric fields. Developers can thus change the wiring of real components without having to have a new circuit board manufactured.

"Software developers have been able to write, test and iterate code in real time for decades. Itera now makes real-time design and iteration possible for hardware," announces AJ Cooper, CEO and co-founder of Itera. "Hardware has always been a challenge because it is immutable. Changes take time and money. Itera makes hardware simple. For the first time ever, an engineer can change and retest a circuit before his coffee gets cold."

Reconfiguration Via Electrowetting

This is based on so-called electrowetting. In this process, an electric field influences the surface tension of a liquid so that it wets or avoids certain areas of a surface. Itera wants to use this effect to specifically position liquid metal as a conductor track.

The approach is primarily aimed at prototype development. Unlike pure simulations, the system works with real components and their actual electrical behavior. According to Itera, developers should also be able to test internal circuit nodes, not just externally accessible test points.

The company has so far only provided limited technical details. Multilayer substrates with through-hole plating have been announced. Liquid metal alloys, such as those investigated in research on the basis of gallium compounds, are possible conductor materials.

Itera is planning the offering as an electronics-as-a-service model. Customer designs are to be built on the reconfigurable substrates in US test centers. The company has received seed funding of USD 12 million; initial production capacities have already been reserved by customers from the automotive and defense sectors. (sg)

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