This week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 76 newly granted utility patents for Apple including a “Liquid Metal” patent and another covering spatial audio.
Jack Purcher for Patently Apple:
Apple’s granted patent relates to techniques in which a fluid such as a liquid metal or a molten salt is used to shape a glass workpiece. Devices made this way could include a HomePod, Home Control device, an iMac, MacBook, iPad or iPhone.
Apple’s patent includes techniques that can be used to shape a glass workpiece to produce a three-dimensional glass component. By the way of example, the three-dimensional glass component may be a glass cover member or a glass housing.
Apple’s patent FIGS. 1A-B below are just two simple device examples of three-dimensional glass components that may be a glass cover member or a glass housing.
MacDailyNews Take: “Liquid Metal” or Liquidmetal®, that is the question.
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Since Liquidmetal is glass (a glassy metal (bulk metallic glass)) it could be Liquid Metal forming Liquidmetal!
ubewatch
I have been waiting for a LiquidMetal product for years. I really think it has great potential as an iPhone back. Its self healing properties and light weight make it, potentially, perfect as a back. Apple probably has more, better, ideas than I could ever think of. I’m just happy to know that LiquidMetal is still being considered.
I hope it is LiquidMetal® and not liquid metal. That company seems to have done almost nothing with a product that could be used in so many ways and that Apple in 2010 was granted “exclusive perpetual license for using the technology in computers / electronics ” AND this year Apple was granted a patent related “…to techniques in which a fluid such as a liquid metal or a molten salt is used to shape a glass workpiece. Devices made this way could include a HomePod, Home Control device, an iMac, MacBook, iPad or iPhone.” I hope this is finally Apple making use of a potentially ground-breaking product from another company – LiquidMetal. (yes, I own shares in LiquidMetal).