Liquidmetal Technologies Inc (LQMT)

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If anyone wants to know where liquidmetal production stands...otw and josh have posted same articles worth a second read

https://xw.qq.com/cmsid/20200812A032KK00

Huawei folding screen volume, liquid metal new air outlet is ready
Alpha Workshop Research Institute08-12 07:30
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Huawei's folding screen mobile phone realizes volume, the key product material liquid metal enters the industrialization, liquid metal enters the industrialization, and a new outlet is ready to go.
Before Yu Chengdong, president of Huawei CBG, revealed that "zirconium-based liquid metal", liquid metal has been in imagination for a long time. It is the T-1000 in Terminator, which slowly condenses from melted mercury objects into a robot with explosive combat effectiveness.
That's an imagination, not a real future of technology and industry. Nearly a hundred years after its discovery, due to the release of Huawei mate x series mobile phones, China's liquid metal industrialization process began to accelerate and is expected to lead the world.
Because the melting point of liquid metal materials is much lower than that of stainless steel and other alloys, and its hardness and wear resistance are excellent, the industry has always expected that this material can be widely used in intelligent equipment, including mobile phones, automobiles, military industry and other fields. However, due to the production capacity and technical threshold, the application scope has not been wide.

The T-1000 gives people imagination, but it is not the future reality of liquid metals.
Previously, Apple was the first to apply liquid metal materials to SIM clips, and some niche brands used it as a middle frame. So far, Huawei mate series chain accessories are the largest application cases of liquid metals in the field of mobile phones.
With the gradual expansion of Huawei's folding screen mobile phones, the scale of the liquid metal industry chain is also gradually increasing, and it is also attracting the attention of the capital market. Recently, "Intelligent Things" learned that Changzhou Shizhen, a liquid metal company based in Jiangsu Province, has just obtained a financing. From Lenovo Investment and its founder Xu Shizhong, its valuation has approached 2 billion yuan.
Changzhou Shijing is also one of the suppliers of Huawei mate x series "zirconium-based liquid metal" chain products.
01 From Apple to Huawei, liquid metal technology is well-known.
Apple was the first to invest in promoting the commercial use of liquid metals. On August 5, 2010, it announced to the world that it had bought out the permanent and global use rights of Liquid Metal's amorphous alloy (liquid metal) products in the field of consumer electronics. Overnight, Liquid metal stocks soared by 85%, and liquid metal materials attracted world attention.
Liquid metal has both metal and glass properties, with extremely high strength and hardness and high finish texture. It is both beautiful and strong, which is in line with the exquisite and durable iPhone positioning. Therefore, Apple began to develop relevant technologies around 2006. Founded in 1983, Liquid metal was the only company in the world at that time with the most comprehensive and core block amorphous metal-related intellectual property rights. It was also the first to successfully apply liquid metal to the commercial field, which was first seen by Apple.
At that time, Apple intended to use liquid metal to make the iPhone case. It not only tried the design of liquid metal middle frame and the research and development of molds, but also teamed up a team with Foxconn to produce dozens of medium frame samples, but eventually gave up due to the high cost of production and manufacturing.
After the compromise, Apple later made the iPhone card pick-up pin with this new material, but the impact of its move was deeply branded in the industry. It pulls liquid metal to people's eyes, attracting capital and new players to pour in.

The unique characteristics of liquid metals are suitable for smart wear and other developments.
The formation of the domestic industrial chain is due to this. A large number of players, such as Pamti Haoyu, Yi'an Technology and Changzhou Shijing, are also deeply related to Apple's Foxconn project.
Shortly after Apple's admission, Huawei also established the 2012 laboratory to select the world's top talents and scientific and technological projects and cultivate the most promising advanced technology in AI, software, communication, materials and other fields. Liquid metals are one of the small branches.
Huawei has conducted a 28-day salt spray test. It found that liquid metal is the only substance that has not oxidized, which prompted it to choose it among thousands of materials. Huawei has determined that liquid metal will be the best material choice in commercial use, and has continued to accumulate research and development for many years. Therefore, when designing the Mate X series mobile phone chain, liquid metal materials can be properly applied.
Liquid metal materials are very attractive. After more than ten years of development, although there has been no more commercial action, Apple has never given up technology accumulation on it, and Foxconn still retains the liquid metal project research team. Nowadays, from Apple to Huawei, liquid metal parts have also moved from the clip to the hinge, with a qualitative change.
Different from the previous small parts such as clipping and camera support parts, the overall design of zirconium-based liquid metal chain is quite complex and larger, which raises the technology and production level of liquid metal parts. It is generally believed in the industry that similar to the emergence of the first generation of iPhone in 2007, although the technology is not mature and the shipment performance is not ideal, but due to its innovative design in technology and products, 5G folding screen mobile phones have epoch-making product significance and can boost the liquid metal industry in shipments.
The zirconium-based liquid metal chain developed by Huawei has brought hope to the liquid metal industry.
02 Folding screen volume, turning point of liquid metal application
However, the difficult molding of liquid metal materials, the high technical threshold, low production capacity and high cost have brought too many obstacles to its commercialization. Looking back on history, it is not surprising that Apple and Foxconn have not been successful in research and development.
Even today, due to the high technical threshold of liquid metal chain design, there are not many real players in the folding screen mobile phone industry at present. Only Huawei and Samsung are in the forefront, and other manufacturers have not kept up. Affected by liquid metal production capacity, the mass production problem of Huawei folding screen mobile phones has also been quite a headache in the past year since its launch.
Previously, Yu Chengdong mentioned in the promotion of folding screen mobile phone products that the key technologies of folding screen mobile phones are flexible screens and chain, and mass production also depends on these two parts.
However, the optimistic attitude of mobile phone manufacturers towards this market has not changed, including Lenovo, Xiaomi and others are working hard to develop folding screen mobile phones.
IHS Markit also gave data forecasts, saying that the shipment of foldable mobile phones is expected to be 8.3 million and 17.5 million respectively this year and that shipments will climb to 53.4 million by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 81% and a penetration rate of about 3.4%. Its data performance is somewhat similar to the shipment trend of iPhone phones that year.

The sales volume of mate xs so far is hundreds of thousands, which may lead to a turning point in the liquid metal industry.
In particular, Huawei recently adjusted the out-of-stock status of Mate Xs on major platforms, and revealed that the upcoming release of the inward folding and more mature product Mate X2, as well as the release of outward folding products in the next few months, all indicate that its control over the design technology of the chain is proficient.
Recently, Google also said that it would launch a folding screen mobile phone Passport in 2021 and other news. It is not difficult to measure the production problem or have been solved from the technical level.
Judging from the actions of mobile phone manufacturers, the predictions of institutions and the actions of liquid metal suppliers themselves, the large number of folding screen mobile phones is likely to be a reality. As Huawei's liquid metal parts supplier, Yi'an Technology and Changzhou Shijing cover most of the industry. Therefore, the amount of folding screen mobile phones not only means hope, but also brings more practical impact to the liquid metal industry, especially the increase of revenue.
Non-profit is a common situation in the liquid metal industry. Up to now, Liquid metal's book revenue is not good at all, and its perennial losses have also become a normal phenomenon in the liquid metal industry.
Recently, Changzhou Shijing has not only just obtained financing, but also its CEO Xu Shizhong announced that he will lease the 600 square meters of his other company Carbon Yuan Technology to Shijing from August 1, which is actively implying the growth of the demand market.
Yi'an Technology recently attracted Sanxiang Zirconium and Magnesium to inject 100 million yuan into Ningde Sanxiang, and promised to provide it with all technical support for amorphous alloys (liquid metals), authorize the use of all relevant technologies, and sell equipment, and also have a trend to expand production capacity.
It can be said that the actions of the two companies basically implement the speculation of Huawei's folding screen mobile phone volume, and also hint that the whole industry will gradually improve revenue due to the increase in product shipments, otherwise capital and new players will not enter.
The liquid metal industry has entered a turning point in history.
03 Liquid metal industrialization problem
It is a fact that the liquid metal industry has not developed, and it is also true that the enthusiasm of various manufacturers has not diminished.
In the past, on the way to explore the commercial use of liquid metals, "losers" are not uncommon. BYD, which was rumored to have been developing liquid millet batteries in the early years, but it is unknown how it has also been far-reaching in the commercialization of lithium iron phosphate batteries. Apple obtained two new patents in the field of liquid metals in 2015, which once brought hope to the industry, but in the end it was not.
Behind their weakness in driving the development of liquid metals, the key is that the liquid metal industry itself is not mature in terms of technology, production and manufacturing technology.
Judging from the 60% yield data released by Changzhou Shijing, manufacturers still have some shortcomings in material research and development, equipment development and process optimization. Some people in the industry have also pointed out for a long time that the preparation process and equipment quantification method of liquid metals are not perfect, and the insufficient supporting resources will greatly restrict the industrialization and large-scale application of liquid metals.
Judging from the direction of technology patents of various companies in the past two years, they actually have this concern. Among the about 30 patents applied for by Changzhou Shijingsheng, except for product design patents, all other patents are concentrated on the improvement of process and material technology, of which one-fifth of the patents are used to reduce costs, accelerate production speed and improve yield. The patents applied for by Yi'an Technology in the past two years have focused more on the design and development of equipment, but the purpose is also obvious, focusing on improving the production capacity of a single equipment.
But there are not only enthusiastic manufacturers such as Apple and Huawei, but also Turing Robotic Industries, which really made liquid metal shell phones, that is, Turing mobile phones that everyone like, and Asus Zenphone 6 released last year. , similar design was made.
In 2020, Black Shark released the ROG Magic Bar 4 Plus, which also used liquid metal materials in the new field of heat dissipation layer.
Including the Tesla Model X liquid metal locks supplied by Yi'an Technology, sports goods such as golf heads, tennis rackets, armor-piercing bullet cores, and the application of medical products such as bone nails, manufacturers of all sizes are making various attempts. The agglomeration effect promotes the imagination space of liquid metals to grow, and also gives the industry More trial and error and development opportunities.
In particular, as the leading manufacturer in the electric vehicle market, Tesla's global sales volume in the first half of this year has reached 179,000, which is the combined sales of Renault-Nissan, Volkswagen and BYD electric vehicles. Strong growth will undoubtedly boost the order volume of the liquid metal door buckle business.
Originating from abroad and highly sought after by Huawei, BYD and Foxconn, the liquid metal industry has developed into the most complete industrial chain ecology in China, including senator Yi'an Technology, Changzhou Shijing and Pamti Haoyu, which was also established in 2014, and Shanghai Chisheng, which was established in 2016.
At present, they also have their own focus on technology research and development and product direction. For example, Changzhou Shijing prefers medical applications and consumer electronics, Yi'an Technology focuses on equipment research and development, and Shanghai Chisheng pays more attention to the research and development of components at the level of consumer electronics applications. On the whole, an industrial ecology of collaborative cooperation has also been formed.
The development of liquid metals is unique. From its first discovery to the beginning of its real large-scale commercial use, it only took more than 80 years, and it was extremely popular and developed at a very fast pace. Nowadays, with the volume of folding screen mobile phones, the stage of market application has been basically set up. It only depends on how several players find their own "characters" in competition and coordination