Apple Granted Exclusive Use of ‘Liquidmetal’ Casing Material

Liquidmetal is no stranger to the consumer electronics industry. The stronger-than-titanium-alloy material has been used in SanDisk flash drives and MP3 players as well as for high-end phones like the fancy-pants Vertu. It’s also been used in jewelry, medical devices, sporting goods, as a coating for industrial machinery, and even in space projects.

But it’ll probably be known best for use in future Apple products, as the two companies have apparently hammered out a deal for Liquidmetal to be used exclusively by Apple. While the Associated Press questions whether “the material will ever make it into its products” due to its “prohibitively expensive nature,” it’s important to point out, again, that Liquidmetal has already been in use for making tough consumer electronics devices and hasn’t raised the prices of, say, flash drives that use the material much higher than conventional flash drives.

However, a full Mac notebook ensconced in the material is a bit different than a little flash drive so it’s unknown whether Apple would use Liquidmetal as part of a notebook casing, for instance, or for all of it.

Liquidmetal claims that the material “enables thinner, smaller designs while providing greater protection for internal components,” so an all-Liquidmetal notebook or tablet from Apple might not be too far off. And let’s not forget about iPhones and iPods, too. A Liquidmetal iPod Shuffle wouldn’t be all that different than the Liquidmetal SanDisk drives that already exist.

Aside from the material’s strength and relative thinness, it’s possible that using Liquidmetal instead of the aluminum used in many currently-produced Apple computers could speed up production time. Liquidmetal can be cast into super precise shapes and doesn’t need to be machined or polished like other metals, according to the AP.

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stephenachan

You are absolutely correct in questioning the Associated Press’ claim that the material will be prohibitively expensive:

“However, Liquidmetal is still very expensive because of it needs exotic raw materials, including beryllium. Some Liquidmetal alloys contain large amounts of platinum, which costs $1,500 an ounce.”

As an undergraduate, I was exposed to the characteristics and processes related to bulk metallic glasses (or “liquid metals”; please see Schroers, Kumar, Hodges, Chan, Kyriakides; “Bulk Metallic Glasses for Biomedical Applications” JOM 2009). I cursory look at journal articles will reveal that a number of amorphous metal alloys have been discovered, including those based on Zr, Cu, Mg, Ti, Au, Ni, and–yes–Platinum. Moreover, LiquidMetal Technologies has produced softball bats and golf clubs made of the material with prices that are competitive, if not lower, than other products.

Overall, I believe the AP has relied on only a shallow level of research into LiquidMetal’s products, and this deficiency has already had a significant impact on the blog-o-sphere and related news articles.

I must mention that the above comments are in no way representative of the opinions of the other coauthors of the aforementioned paper, nor Yale University.

Regards,
Stephen Chan
http://josgrevar.wordpress.com josgrevar

I personally think that Apple did its homework, including its math, way before coming into an agreement with Liquid metal. They probably even created some sort of iPhone or MacBook prototype with this new material, and they were happy with the results, which lead it to buy the rights to be the only ones to use it. Apple has the best engineers and scientist that money can buy, so I believe that they didn’t even consider the “prohibited cost” of this technology if that was true and if they weren’t able to use it in its products.