Liquidmetal Technologies Inc (LQMT)

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Compliments of a reliable source-Joshuaeyu

Behind the high volume of folding screen mobile phones, the liquidmetal industry started

*Huawei's folding screen mobile phone has begun to increase its volume, and the key hinge product material - liquidmetal has begun to turn from imagination into an industry. How big can it be?*

*Before Huawei CBG President Yu Chengdong revealed the "Zirconium-based LiquidMetal", the liquidmetal stayed in the imagination for a long time. It was the T-1000 in "Terminator". From the molten mercury object, it slowly condensed into an explosive surface. robot.*

*That is an imagination, not the future of real technology and industry. Nearly a hundred years after being discovered, due to the release of Huawei's mate x series of mobile phones, China's liquidmetal industrialization process has begun to accelerate and is expected to lead the world.*

*Since the melting point of liquidmetal materials is much lower than that of stainless steel and other alloys, and their hardness and wear resistance are excellent, the industry has always expected that this material can be widely used in smart devices, automobiles, and military industries including mobile phones. However, due to production capacity and technical thresholds, the scope of application has not been wide.*

*Prior to this, Apple was the first to apply liquidmetal material to the SIM card needle, and some niche brands used it as a middle frame. So far, the hinge accessories of Huawei's mate series are the largest application case of liquidmetal in the field of mobile phones.*

*With the gradual increase in volume of Huawei's folding screen mobile phones, the scale of the liquidmetal industry chain is gradually increasing, and it is also attracting the attention of the capital market. Recently, "Zhiwu" learned that Changzhou Shijing, a liquidmetal company located in Jiangsu, has just received a financing from Lenovo Capital and its founder Xu Shizhong, whose valuation is close to 2 billion.*

*Changzhou Shijing is also one of the suppliers of Huawei's mate x series of "Zirconium-based LiquidMetal" hinge products.*

*From Apple to Huawei, the origin of liquidmetal*

*In promoting the commercial use of liquidmetal, Apple was the first to invest. On August 5, 2010, it announced to the world that it would buy out the permanent and global use right of LiquidMetal's amorphous alloy (liquidmetal) products in the consumer electronics field. Overnight, LiquidMetal stocks soared by 85%, and liquidmetal materials attracted the attention of the world.*

*Because liquidmetal has the properties of metal and glass, it has extremely high strength, hardness, and high-finish texture. It is both beautiful and strong. It is consistent with the delicate and durable iPhone positioning. Therefore, around 2006, Apple began the research and development of related technologies. . Liquidmetal, founded in 1983, was the only company in the world with the most comprehensive and core intellectual property rights related to bulk amorphous metals. It was also the first company to successfully apply liquidmetal to the commercial field, and it was recognized by Apple.*

*At the time, Apple deliberately wanted to use liquidmetal to make the iPhone shell. It not only tried the design of the liquidmetal middle frame and the research and development of the mold, but also established a team with Foxconn to produce dozens of middle frame samples, but it finally gave up due to the high cost of the manufacturing process.*

*After making a compromise, Apple later only used this new material to make the iPhone's card pick-up needle, but the impact of its actions was deeply imprinted in the industry. It drew liquidmetal to people's eyes at once, attracting capital and new players influx.*

*The formation of the domestic industrial chain can be attributed to this. A large number of players, such as Prometaltech, Eontec, and Changzhou Shijing, are mostly related to Apple's Foxconn project.*

*Soon after Apple entered the market, Huawei also established the 2012 Lab. The purpose is to select the world’s top talents and technology projects and cultivate the most promising advanced technologies in AI, software, communications, materials and other fields. Liquidmetal is one of them. Small branch.*

*Huawei has done a 28-day salt spray test and found that liquidmetal is the only substance that has not been oxidized. This feature prompted it to choose it among thousands of materials. Huawei believes that liquidmetal will be the best material choice for commercial use, and has continued to carry out research and development for many years. Therefore, when designing the hinges of the Mate X series of mobile phones, liquidmetal materials can be properly applied.*

*The charm of liquidmetal materials is great. For more than ten years of development,* ***Apple has never given up on its technology accumulation despite no more commercial actions****, and Foxconn still retains a liquidmetal project research team. Nowadays, from Apple to Huawei, liquidmetal parts have also moved from card needles to hinges, and there has been a qualitative change.*

*Different from the previous small parts such as the card picking needle and the support parts of the camera, the overall design of the Zirconium-based LiquidMetal hinge is quite complicated and the shape is larger, which has raised the technology and production level of liquidmetal parts. The industry generally believes that, similar to the appearance of the first-generation iPhone in 2007, although the technology is not mature enough and the shipment performance is not ideal, the 5G folding screen mobile phone has epoch-making product significance due to its innovative design in technology and products. , Which can boost the liquidmetal industry in terms of shipments.*

***The Zirconium-based LiquidMetal hinge developed by Huawei has brought hope to the liquidmetal industry.***

*Folding screen volume, liquidmetal turning point*

*However, the difficulty of forming liquidmetal materials, high technical thresholds, low production capacity, and high costs have brought too many obstacles to its commercialization. Looking back at history, it is not surprising that Apple and Foxconn have not succeeded in research and development.*

*Even today, due to the high threshold of liquidmetal hinge design technology, there are not many real players in the folding screen mobile phone industry. Only Huawei and Samsung are in the front, and other manufacturers have not kept up. Affected by the production capacity of liquidmetal, the mass production of Huawei's folding screen mobile phones has been a headache since the launch of one year.*

*Prior to the promotion of folding screen mobile phones, Yu Chengdong mentioned that the key technologies of folding screen mobile phones are flexible screens and hinges, and mass production also depends on these two parts.*

*However, the optimistic attitude of mobile phone manufacturers towards this market has not changed. Lenovo and Xiaomi are all intensively developing folding screen mobile phones.*

*IHS Markit also gave data forecasts, saying that the shipments of foldable mobile phones this year and next year are expected to be 8.3 million and 17.5 million, respectively. By 2025, the shipments will climb to 53.4 million, with a compound annual growth rate of 81%. The rate is about 3.4%. Its data performance is somewhat similar to the trend of iPhone shipments that year.*

*In particular, Huawei recently adjusted the out-of-stock status of major platforms Mate Xs to on-sales, and revealed that it will release an inward-folding, more mature product Mate X2, and will release outward-folding products in the next few months, all hinting It has been proficient in the control of hinge design technology.*

*Recently,* ***Google also said to the outside world that it will launch the folding screen mobile phone*** *Passport and other news in 2021. It is not difficult to guess the production problem or it has been solved from the technical level.*

*Judging from the actions of mobile phone manufacturers, the predictions of institutions, and the actions of liquidmetal suppliers themselves, it has become a fact that there is a high probability of large quantities of folding screen mobile phones. As Huawei's liquidmetal parts suppliers, Eontec and Changzhou Shijing, etc. cover most of the entire industry. As a result, the volume of folding screen mobile phones for the liquidmetal industry not only means hope, but also has a more practical impact, especially the increase in revenue.*

*Not making money has always been a common situation in the liquidmetal industry. Since its development, LiquidMetal's revenue on the books is not good at all, and year-round losses have become a normal phenomenon in the liquidmetal industry.*

*Recently, Changzhou Shijing not only has just received financing, but its CEO Xu Shizhong also announced that from August 1st, it will lease the 600 square meters factory building of another company, Carbon Yuan Technology, to Shijinglai, all of which are actively suggesting the growth of the demand market.*

*Eontec also recently brought in Sanxiang Zirconium Magnesium to inject 100 million yuan into Ningde Sanxiang, and promised to provide it with all technical support for amorphous alloys (liquidmetal), authorization to use all related technologies, and sales of equipment. The trend of expanding production capacity.*

*It can be said that the actions of the two of them have basically fulfilled Huawei’s speculation of increasing the volume of folding screen phones, and also hinted that the entire industry will gradually improve in terms of revenue due to the increase in product shipments, otherwise the capital and new players will not Will enter.*

*The liquidmetal industry has entered a turning point in history.*

*Liquidmetal industrialization problems*

*It is a fact that the liquidmetal industry has not developed, and it is also a fact that the enthusiasm of various manufacturers has not diminished.*

*In the past, "losers" were not uncommon on the way to explore the commercial use of liquidmetal. In the early years, it was reported that BYD was developing liquid golden millet batteries, but how it was later unknown, and now it has already gone far on the road to commercialization of lithium iron phosphate batteries. In 2015, Apple obtained two new patents in the field of liquidmetal, which once brought hope to the industry, but in the end it was nothing.*

*Behind their inability to drive the development of liquidmetal, the key is that the technology and manufacturing process of the liquidmetal industry are not mature enough.*

*Judging from the 60% yield data released by Changzhou Shijing, the current technology of manufacturers in material research and development, equipment development and process optimization is still somewhat inadequate. Some people in the industry have also pointed out that the liquidmetal preparation process and equipment quantification method are not perfect, and the lack of supporting resources will greatly restrict the industrialization and large-scale application of liquidmetal.*

*It can be seen from the technical patent directions of various companies in the past two years that they actually have this concern. Among the approximately 30 patents applied by Changzhou Shijingsheng, except for product design patents, other patents are focused on the improvement of process and material technology. Among them, the number of patents used to reduce costs, speed up production and increase yield accounts for By one-fifth. The patents applied by Eontec in the past two years are more focused on equipment design and research and development, but the purpose is also obvious, focusing on increasing the production capacity of a single device.*

*But enthusiastic manufacturers are not only head players such as Apple and Huawei. Turing Robotic Industries, the earliest mobile phone made of liquidmetal shells, is the Turing mobile phone that everyone loves, and the Asus Zenphone 6 released last year, also made a similar design.*

*In 2020, Black Shark released ROG Moba 4 Plus, which uses liquidmetal materials in the new field of heat dissipation layer.*

*Including the Tesla Model X liquidmetal locks supplied by Eontec, sporting goods such as golf heads, tennis rackets, armor-piercing bullet cores, and the application of bone nails and other medical products, manufacturers of all sizes are making various attempts. The agglomeration effect promotes the continuous expansion of the imagination of liquidmetal, and also gives the industry more opportunities for trial and error and development.*

*In particular, as the leading manufacturer of the electric vehicle market, Tesla’s global sales in the first half of this year have reached 179,000, which is the combined sales of Renault-Nissan, Volkswagen and BYD. The strong growth will undoubtedly Increase the order volume of liquidmetal door latch business.*

*Originated from abroad, and highly sought after by Huawei, BYD and Foxconn, the liquidmetal industry has developed the most complete industrial chain ecology in China, including the veteran Eontec, Changzhou Shijing and Prometaltech, both established in 2014 Yu, and Shanghai Chisheng established in 2016.*

*At present, they also have their own focus on technology research and development and product directions. For example, Changzhou Shixiang is biased towards medical applications and both consumer electronics, Eontec focuses on equipment research and development, and Shanghai Chisheng focuses more on the zero level of consumer electronics applications. Component development. As a whole, a collaborative industrial ecology has also been formed.*

*The development of liquidmetal is unique. It only took more than eighty years from the first discovery to the beginning of real large-scale commercial use. The popularity is extremely high and the pace of development is extremely fast. Nowadays, with the increase in the number of folding screen mobile phones, the stage of market applications has basically been set up. It only depends on how the major players find their own "roles" in competition and collaboration.*

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[https://xw.qq.com/cmsid/20200901A0OHDR00](https://xw.qq.com/cmsid/20200901A0OHDR00)