In this paper a combined theoretical and experimental study is reported on the process of solidification of a liquid metal droplet by impaction on a cold substrate (splat-quenching). The study is focused on the heat transfer aspects of this process and on the identification of parameters affecting the heat transfer mechanism. To this end, the effect of the droplet impact velocity and temperature, the effect of the substrate material and its initial temperature, and the effect of the thermal contact resistance between the splat and the substrate are investigated. A two-dimensional conduction model accounting for the freezing process in the splat and for the solidification kinetics has predicted reasonably well the trends observed in the experimental part of the study.