Rebirth of Northland Technology

An ordinary float glass production line, I am afraid that the world's LCD production can not be used if it is magnified ten times.The economy is very bad.

The second reason is that the follow-up work is complicated.

LCD has very high requirements for the flatness of the glass surface and other technical indicators.The glass produced by the float process has to go through a very complicated follow-up process before it can be used.

After several rounds of process demonstrations, Bingfei’s technicians were not recruited. In the end, they started the experiment from scratch according to the ideas provided by Cheng Yongxing.

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The process introduced by Cheng Yongxing is the "Overflow Melting Method".

This method has become the mainstream of LCD and even mobile phone screens in later generations, but at this time, it has just been put into mass production.

The "Overflow Melting Method" was invented in 1959, but there has not been much progress for decades.It wasn't until 1985 that this technology was broken through and it truly became a practical production process.

In 1989, Corning had just established its first factory.It was this factory that gave Corning the hegemony in the glass industry.

It is still the starting point of everything.

China's LCD industry is finally on the starting line with the world.

The first boom cycle of the LCD industry will soon come.

The strong wind of TFT-LCD is about to blow, and everything in the tuyere will flutter in the wind.

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The name "Overflow Melting" is a bit weird, but the explanation is relatively simple.

The molten glass is introduced into the container, and after the molten glass reaches the upper limit of the volume, it overflows from both sides of the container along the outer wall, and forms a sheet substrate after converging below it like a waterfall.

There are many advantages of this process. First, the equipment investment in the early stage is relatively low (compared with the float process).In addition, the glass does not need to be in contact with any medium during molding, and there will be no problems such as differences in the properties of the glass surface due to contact with the medium, so there is no need for processing steps such as back-end polishing.

Therefore, it has the advantages of simple process, small investment and high capacity utilization rate.

The difficulty of this method is that it requires a container mold.When the size of the glass becomes larger, the mold will also face deformation due to mechanical stress.

At this time, how to maintain the level of the glass solution and how to stably drive the molten glass into the center of the mold has become a problem.

The larger the size of the glass substrate manufactured by this method, the greater the difficulty.In the end, the bottleneck in the manufacture of liquid crystal displays lies in the glass substrate.

But at this time, this is not a big problem.The current main object-oriented LCD is only notebook computers.The laptop monitor is not more than 10 inches!

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Cheng Yongxing is also preparing to adopt a reactionary approach on the glass substrate, that is, not cutting!

All generations of LCD production lines (including later generations) have similar production processes, and all process a larger glass substrate.After processing, cut into small pieces.

This method is conducive to production efficiency and increase production.

For example, the size of the glass substrate of the 5th generation line is 1.2 meters x 1.3 meters.After all processing is completed, cut it into 6 pieces.Each serving is a 27-inch (0.6m x 0.4m) finished product.Process 6 monitors (TVs) directly in one processing.

But this method puts forward higher requirements for all equipment and raw materials on the production line.

0.6 meters and 1.2 meters, the width increased twice, the manufacturing requirements of the upstream glass substrate, the difficulty not only increased by two times, but increased by 20 times!

It is simply the relationship between can and can't!

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For the same reason, it also puts forward higher requirements for all processing equipment.

For example, a lithography machine must be able to directly irradiate 6 times the area (which is not practical), or it must be moved six times and then irradiated separately.Either way, higher technical requirements are proposed.

Not to mention the difficulty of manufacturing the moving parts itself, the volume of the lithography machine must be a bit bigger!

Such higher technical requirements may only mean cost in foreign countries.But in China, in this era, it has become an impossible task.

The meaning of the non-cutting solution is that 10-inch products can be matched with 11-inch glass substrates at most!Just leave a safe distance.

This scheme sacrifices operating costs, but saves production line construction costs (equipment manufacturing costs), and more importantly, the difficulty is greatly reduced.

In addition, on the LCD production line, the biggest cost is not operating costs, but equipment depreciation costs.If the cost of production equipment is too high, the resulting depreciation costs are compared with the saved operating costs, and it is difficult to say which is more cost-effective.

The method of processing large substrates can indeed increase production efficiency, but it is not an increase in multiple relationships.

I used a large lithography machine to move and irradiate a large glass six times. It looked like a process, but in fact it was irradiated six times.

Compared with using a small lithography machine to continuously irradiate six pieces of glass, the efficiency is high, but the high is limited!

And the equipment?

6 times larger lithography machine?Just think about it.

Besides, after the light source and the lens are moved, what about "Stop as a Mountain"?Bad review!

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When Cheng Yongxing and his party arrived at Bingfei, the experiment had already been completed.Several pieces of glass of varying thickness were placed on the table in the conference room.

This kind of experiment is also quite time-consuming.Waiting for the guests to start is unlikely.

Several samples on the table have different thicknesses, and no two samples have the same thickness.But these are not big problems, at least these samples prove that the idea is feasible!

As for the thickness of glass, in this age, it is not a very demanding question.

In later generations, the thickness of the glass substrate of the liquid crystal display was very strict.Due to the requirement of weight reduction, the thickness of the glass substrate should be less than 0.7 mm.

This kind of glass has to be thin and strong enough, which is somewhat difficult.

But at this time, the glass substrate, let alone 1 mm, can definitely be accepted by the market.Solve the problems first, and then solve the good ones.

This is the world's first generation TFT-LCD!There is no reference at all, how can it be better?

In later generations, with the increasingly fierce competition, the requirements for the optical and chemical properties of glass substrates have become more and more stringent, but now, these are still just getting started.

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In the process of TFT-LCD research, Cheng Yongxing's pragmatism thought was brought to the extreme.

Pursue only usability, not good usability.

The manual LED production line is the result of this idea.The same is true for LED large screen samples.This time he was even ready, and he really couldn't prepare for the float.

Bad economy?waste?

It's not a problem!The production line with a daily output of 100 tons only needs to produce one day a year!

The follow-up process is complicated?

Take DTI's production capacity as an example. It produces 4,200 pieces of products a month and only more than 100 pieces a day.

Just use manual grinding, but also to grind the glass out!The current panel size is not in the era of 180 inches!

And a glass substrate production line, the output value created is a hundred times, a thousand times that of ordinary glass!

What is waste of material?What is a waste of labor?Isn't it good to create more jobs?

Bingfei glass, handmade!

What economic scale?What is the optimal cutting size?What is the optimal production process?

All are fallacies!

Under this idea, the production of glass substrates is not difficult.

As for the remaining work, how to pull down, how to control the thickness of the glass, how to cut, and how to produce continuously, it is left to Bingfei's glass team to slowly study and figure it out.

The Japanese complained that the yield rate reached 10%.The profit left to Bingfei is enough for them to make a profit with a 5% yield.

Of course, this also has something to do with glass, which can be recycled repeatedly.

A big rock just fell.

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It is convenient to have a car. When the two returned to school, they still caught up with lunch.

"Are you going to use glass as a substrate to produce LEDs?"

Liu Jing watched the excitement all the way today, but she didn't understand at all, a group of people were studying what the thin glass did.She didn't have a guess until she got in the car.

"is it not OK?"

The question was not answered, but a rhetorical question.

"That's great! You don't know, the price of sapphire has gone crazy recently. If we can replace the substrate with glass, we can save a lot of money!"

Liu Jingxin thought it was true and was very satisfied with the unexpected gain this time.

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With the end of the technology conference, the brainwashed LED manufacturers have come up with their own production capacity plan, for fear that in the future market outbreak, they will suffer a loss because of the backward production capacity.

With the capacity expansion plans announced by various LED manufacturers, it will naturally have a considerable impact on upstream and downstream industries.The most influential one is the upstream sapphire supplier.The production of sapphire still has a considerable threshold.

Before the outbreak of the LED industry, sapphire was not used in large-scale commodity production.Its main applications are military and optical fields.

As the first downstream product for the consumer market, the demand for blue LEDs immediately increased the price of sapphire.

Suppliers with sapphire manufacturing capabilities are all eager to make a fortune.

A group of capable military enterprises in China were all fooled by optoelectronics to start their LED production lines. Now they suddenly discovered that it was more profitable to make sapphire!

With the gradual disintegration of the Soviet Union, some key technologies of sapphire production were passed back to China.A large number of companies are ready to use these Soviet technologies to make the first pot of gold.