A staff member of Shanxi Taigang Stainless Steel Precision Strip Co., Ltd. in north China's Shanxi Province shows a sheet of ultra-thin stainless steel that is only 0.015 mm thick. (Xinhua/Zhang Lei)

Shanxi Taigang Stainless Steel Precision Strip Co., Ltd. in north China's Shanxi Province has made further progress in developing ultra-thin stainless steel products after it succeeded in producing ultra-thin stainless steel as thin as 0.02 mm after ten years of effort.

The ultra-thin stainless steel is known as "hand-tearable steel" as it can be easily ripped by hand. It is a high-end product used in foldable phones, the aerospace industry, and other sectors.

For a long time, only a few countries mastered the production technology of ultra-thin stainless steel, and China had to import it at extremely high costs. Driven by huge demand, the company decided to break through the bottleneck of the production technology.

At the end of 2018, the company finally produced 0.02-mm ultra-thin stainless steel with a width of 600 mm, which was much wider than the maximum of 450 mm produced by foreign countries back then, after 711 failures and solving 172 problems related to equipment, and 452 technical problems. The company became the only enterprise globally capable of mass-producing wide ultra-thin stainless steel precision foil.

After the company developed ultra-thin stainless steel products, the prices of imported ones were immediately cut by half, and the supply cycle was shortened from half a year to one month.

After more than a year, the company unveiled 0.015-mm stainless steel, which was then the world's thinnest stainless steel.

"We have mass-produced stainless steel sheets that are only 0.015 mm thick, and we will continue to produce thinner ultra-thin stainless steel," said Liao Xi, the company's chief engineer in precision foil.

"The thickness of 0.02 mm is just a starting point. We will constantly upgrade our ultra-thin stainless steel products," said Fan Zhongye, deputy Party chief of the company, who has been engaged in the industry for more than 30 years.

Photo shows a workshop of Shanxi Taigang Stainless Steel Precision Strip Co., Ltd. in north China's Shanxi Province. (Xinhua/Zhan Yan)

The company's ultra-thin stainless steel products cover over 20 series under three categories, and owns more than 30 core stainless steel patents.

A brand new production line has been put into operation at the company's workshop, which will further improve its production capacity of ultra-thin stainless steel products.

At a company laboratory, a piece of ultra-thin stainless steel strip as large as a cell phone screen, and as thin as a cicada's wings is on display. Over 2 million microscopic pores are evenly distributed on the surface of this tiny strip.

This is an upgraded version of ultra-thin stainless steel and is a key material for producing OLED flexible screens, which are widely used in smartphone production and other applications.

In April 2023, the company mass produced this product, which has been supplied to several of its domestic clients, reducing the high dependence on imports of the product.

"New application scenarios of new products drive the continuous optimization of new materials and boost innovation and R&D of ultra-thin stainless steel," said Liao, adding that the company has relentlessly innovated and pushed the R&D of ultra-thin stainless steel products.

In recent years, the company has been determined to develop ultra-flat, ultra-thin, ultra-hard and special stainless steel. Its research team of ultra-thin stainless steel has more than 30 members with an average age of about 36, compared with six to seven members at first.

Duan Haojie, general manager of the company, said their ultimate goal is to establish a high-end industrial chain.