Quartz is a non-metallic mineral found everywhere in nature. Quartz can be found wherever the human eye can see, such as the sand in the mortar used for home decoration, the quartz countertops in the kitchen, the sand and white pebbles in the river when going out to play, as well as beautiful crystals, agates, etc. It is quartz.
In nature, although quartz is widely distributed, high-purity quartz with high purity is very rare. High-purity quartz is an indispensable and irreplaceable important functional material for high-tech industries such as semiconductor chips, solar photovoltaics, optical fiber communications, aerospace, precision optics and special glass. The supply of quartz has extremely important strategic significance for maintaining national security in the fields of economy, military, science and technology, and network; it is also important for developing the photovoltaic new energy industry and helping the country achieve the goals of “carbon peaking” and “carbon neutrality”. strategic value.
Quartz can be formed during the cooling and crystallization of magma, or it can be formed by the cooling of silica-rich hydrothermal fluids. Due to the different temperature and pressure conditions when quartz crystallizes, different quartz group minerals such as low-temperature quartz (α-quartz), high-temperature quartz (β-quartz) and coesite are formed. Among them, the most widely distributed in nature is low-temperature quartz (α-quartz). Quartz is a mineral that forms aggregates with other minerals to form various rocks. Rocks with quartz as a single mineral include: crystal, agate, opal, vein quartz, quartzite, quartz sandstone, deep-sea radiolarian siliceous rock, and so on. Among such rocks, the ones with economical mining and utilization value become quartz ore. Some magmatic rocks containing quartz minerals, such as granite pegmatite, white granite, etc., will also be used as a source of quartz if the quartz contained has economic mining and utilization value.
Quartz is a silicon-oxygen tetrahedral structure composed of one silicon atom and four oxygen atoms, and the molecular formula is SiO2. Quartz crystals are often doped with some impurity elements during the crystallization process and the subsequent metamorphism. There are three sources of these impurity elements.
Through the above introduction, I believe everyone can see that although quartz is a very common and common mineral, high-purity quartz is a scarce mineral raw material and an indispensable mineral in emerging industries such as new energy and new materials. resource. Guaranteeing high-purity quartz supply channels and establishing independent supply chains are of crucial strategic value to national security, economic and social operations, and competition between countries.