Glass is a very common material in life, and quartz glass is a high-performance glass with a wide range of uses. The following Xiaoyi will introduce the research results of the “Yi” investment promotion industry research team on the quartz glass industry.
Today we enter the overview chapter to learn about related concepts and basic situations.
Quartz glass is a kind of special glass containing only a single component of silica.
Due to different types, processes and raw materials, foreign countries are often called silicate glass, quartz glass, fused quartz, fused quartz, synthetic fused quartz, and transparent, translucent, opaque quartz without a clear concept.
In my country, it is collectively referred to as quartz glass, which is mostly classified according to the process method, use and appearance, such as fused transparent quartz glass, continuous fused quartz glass, gas-smelted transparent quartz glass, synthetic quartz glass, opaque quartz glass, optical quartz glass, and semiconductor quartz glass. , Quartz glass for electric light source, etc.
Quartz glass is known as the king of glass in the industry. It is made from natural crystalline quartz (crystal or high-purity silica) or silicon compounds and is melted at high temperature in a clean environment. According to the raw materials, quartz glass can be divided into two categories: natural and synthetic. The purity of the former is generally above 99.9%, and the latter is generally above 99.9999%. The material purity is the core indicator to ensure the excellent performance of quartz glass.
Quartz glass first originated abroad. In the 1950s, with the surge in the amount of quartz glass used by semiconductor technology and new electric light sources, the quartz glass industry began to develop.
Quartz glass has a series of excellent physical and chemical properties, including extremely low thermal expansion coefficient, excellent temperature resistance, good chemical stability, excellent electrical insulation, low and stable ultrasonic retardation, optimal UV, Visible light and near-infrared spectral transmittance, and have higher mechanical properties than ordinary glass, using the aforementioned advantages can be made into quartz glass ingots, tubes, rods, plates, crucibles, various utensils and devices, and quartz glass fibers And fabrics and other products, these products are widely used in the production process environment such as aerospace, nuclear energy laser, semiconductor, optical communication, metallurgy, chemical industry, Electric light source and other industries.
In recent years, the domestic quartz glass material and product industry has achieved remarkable development, the product quality has been significantly improved, and the scale has continued to expand. The quality of some domestic quartz glass materials and products has approached the level of international counterparts.
In terms of the processing of quartz glass products, the current domestic processing capacity has reached a high level, but compared with the international advanced quartz manufacturers, there is still a certain gap. The use of quartz glass materials in the semiconductor field is limited. Domestic quartz processing manufacturers still mainly use imported materials to produce high-end quartz products. The advanced technology of quartz glass materials for semiconductors is mainly occupied by foreign companies such as Heraeus of Germany, Qsil of Germany, Tosoh of Japan and Momentive of the United States. .
From the perspective of the entire industry, at present, domestic enterprises have many low-cost repeated constructions, low profits and low quality, and are energy and labor-intensive industries. Most high-end products still need to be imported at high prices, while foreign enterprises are used in high-power lamp and semiconductor production. The technical level of quartz furnace tube, large-size optical lens, synthetic quartz glass for liquid crystal display, optical fiber sleeve and optical fiber preform, special quartz glass and high value-added quartz glass has been quite mature. In order to improve their competitiveness, domestic key enterprises in the industry are accelerating the pace of technological innovation, adopting new materials, new processes, and optimizing performance parameters to narrow the gap with the advanced level of foreign competitors.