Can The Breakthrough Of Stainless Steel Soaking Plate Technology Overtake On The Curve?

Lingyizhizao, which is well known in the market as "Apple industrial chain standard" and "precision functional parts leader", has started to enter the field of VC heat pipe and soaking plate since 2018.

Little known is that this product line alone can generate revenue of 800-1 billion yuan per year, which can be called the "invisible champion" in this subdivision field.

With the development of 5g communication technology, smart phones require higher chip integration and higher heat flux per unit volume. This means that in order to ensure the good operation of the CPU, the demand for heat dissipation of mobile phones is also more urgent.

In the field of mobile phone heat dissipation, in recent years, the thin plate-like products made of copper material, namely, soaking plate and heat pipe, are widely used. Stainless steel soaking plate has always been a technical problem in the industry. It is understood that the ultra-thin stainless steel soaking plate developed by lingyizhizao (002600) can be used in the fields of consumer electronics and new energy vehicles.

In order to understand the latest technology in the field of heat dissipation and its impact on the future development of the company, the reporter of 21st century economic report interviewed Xu Zhiwen, chief technology officer (CTO), President and vice president of ITRI. The 21st century economic report reporter has learned that lingyizhizao is expanding the layout of the cooling track, and is fully promoting the upgrading and leaping of the cooling scheme from mobile phones to new energy vehicles, so as to realize its long planned overtaking on the curve.

5g drive cooling scheme upgrade

At present, in the mobile phone industry is a large-scale commercial passive cooling mode, mainly including graphite heat dissipation, frame heat dissipation, thermal gel heat dissipation, heat pipe heat dissipation, soaking plate and so on.

Among them, the soaking plate is considered to be the main way to solve the cooling problem of mobile phones in the future. With the continuous improvement of chip power density, the soaking plate has been widely used in the heat dissipation of CPU, NP, ASIC and other high-power devices.

The heat dissipation principle of this product is that the heat is dissipated by the phase change of internal liquid working medium, that is, after contacting the heat source parts such as integrated circuit (IC) and central processing unit (CPU), the liquid evaporates, and the heat is taken away by gasification, and becomes vapor diffusion. The vapor is cooled away from the heat source, then turns into liquid again, and flows back to the heat source along the capillary wick.

In 2018, linyizhizao entered the field of heat pipe and soaking plate. "At the beginning, we processed graphite flakes and graphene as the main raw materials to create relevant heat dissipation components," Xu Zhiwen told reporters, "However, with the advent of the first year of 5g in 2019, Lingyi quickly identified this important field, so it established a laboratory and established a research and development team in the first quarter. By the end of 2020, it will complete the production line construction of heat pipe 4 million / month and soaking plate 6 million / month capacity."

At present, copper is the main material of soaking plate in the market. The R & D team led by Xu Zhiwen found that although copper has good thermal conductivity, it becomes soft after high temperature treatment, and its mechanical properties are very poor. It is difficult to achieve a thickness of 0.3mm or even 0.2mm for this kind of product. And the cost is relatively high.

How to solve these problems? The R & D team focused on stainless steel materials.

In this scheme, stainless steel will react with water at high temperature, resulting in the disappearance of heat dissipation effect, which is the core difficulty of perplexing the industry. In addition, the welding and flatness of stainless steel materials is also a big test.

At the same time of developing copper soaking plate products, the R & D team of Linyi Zhizao began to strive to overcome the technical difficulties of the stainless steel soaking plate mentioned above.

"In 2019, we will simultaneously develop the soaking plate of stainless steel. It is indeed a long way to overcome the heat treatment, welding and surface treatment technology. The results are still quite exciting. Last year, our products passed 2000 hours of internal testing. In the first half of this year, we communicated with customers repeatedly, and finally got the order for them in the second half of this year It provides 0.3mm stainless steel soaking plate, "Yu quanyao, member of Xu Zhiwen's R & D team and head of heat dissipation R & D team, told reporters of the 21st century economic report.

Xu Zhiwen stressed that at present, the cooling solutions and core technologies provided by lingyizhizao are all self-developed, and the stainless steel heat dissipation plate is the industry's first. "Its technical advantage is thin first. The thickness of soaking plate has broken through from 0.4mm to 0.3mm and 0.2mm. 0.2mm is the world's ultra-thin stainless steel soaking plate. In terms of materials, stainless steel material is corrosion-resistant, and its mechanical properties are more than twice that of copper material. At present, automatic mass production has been realized. More importantly, lingyizhizao has successfully applied stamping combined with its internal advantages in stamping process The technology replaces the traditional etching process, and can achieve a cost reduction of more than 10% in an instant, which has a very big competitive advantage in this field

"In the past, Taiwan, the United States and Japan did a better job in the heat dissipation scheme, but I believe that through the heat dissipation technology independently developed by leader, China can achieve light loading and overtaking on corners in this field."

Leapfrogging of new energy vehicles

Not only can it be applied to smart phones, but also the application scenarios of the cooling solution made by Linyi have more imagination space.

(soaking plate) in the domestic mobile phone market alone, there is room for 4.3 billion yuan. There are still many new fields, and there is a huge increase in consumer electronics. New energy vehicles also bring new demand for heat dissipation. This will be a huge blue ocean, "Xu said.

It is worth noting that just this year, Lingyi Zhizao released a number of announcements, saying that it will go deep into new energy vehicles, AR / VR, medical, clean energy and other intelligent manufacturing new fields.

Among them, the field of new energy vehicles will become an important layout of leader intelligence.

"New energy vehicles bring important opportunities, including a lot of heat dissipation requirements. For example, after the lightweight upgrade, there are new requirements for the structural parts of new energy batteries, and the battery pack also needs to upgrade the heat dissipation scheme." Xu Zhiwen said, "the stainless steel soaking plate made by lingyizhi is also expected to be suitable for new energy vehicles."

From the business layout back to the secondary market, what attracted the attention of investors was that in the first half of this year, the revenue of Lingyi Zhizao reached 12.742 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.67%; Net profit was 398 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 36.95%.

As for the reasons for the decline in performance, Lingyi Zhizao said in the announcement that it was mainly affected by the shortage of chips for smart phones and the epidemic situation. In addition to the above short-term factors, it should be pointed out that the increase in R & D investment of Lingyi Zhizao in the first half of the year is also the main reason for the performance fluctuation. In the first half of the year, the company invested 850 million yuan in R & D, up 31.97% year on year.

At present, the market pays more attention to the business situation of lingyizhizao in the second half of the year, especially the new development opportunities that the ultra-thin stainless steel soaking plate technology may bring.

"The company is very busy at the moment," Xu said, adding that orders were plentiful and were preparing for the coming peak season.