Quartz is one of the rock-forming minerals and one of the most widely distributed minerals on the earth’s surface. It has a wide range of uses. From the Stone Age all the way to modern civilization, quartz has played a huge role.
In the 20th century, quartz sparked a revolution in timekeeping. At that time, Swiss watch technology held a dominant position for nearly a century. Until 1969, Japan invented the first quartz watch, using a battery-powered quartz crystal resonator, which completely shook the status of Swiss watches.
Quartz is a material with very stable physical and chemical properties. It has high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, good light transmission, good insulation, and special piezoelectricity. It has been applied to all aspects of life and industry.
Glass Industry
SiO2 is the main component in glass. Quartz is added to door and window glass, glass wine glasses, glass vases, and glass ornaments that can be seen everywhere in daily life.
Building materials industry
Ordinary quartz sand powder and refined quartz sand powder can be used to manufacture artificial quartz plates, which are used for various countertops such as kitchens, and can also be used for tile adhesives, dry mortar, cement standard sand, football field laying sand, etc.
Quartz powder is used in cement to significantly improve the performance of compression resistance, flexural resistance, impermeability, corrosion resistance, impact resistance and wear resistance, and has the functions of water retention, segregation prevention and bleeding prevention.
Foundry, grinding industry
The market share of quartz sand products used in the foundry industry is about 40%. Foundry sand is used to prepare molding sand and core sand in foundry production. Foundry quartz sand is divided into resin sand casting, sodium silicate sand casting, and lost foam casting.
Rubber
Quartz powder has excellent properties such as non-toxic, odorless, non-polluting, good temperature resistance, acid and alkali corrosion resistance, poor thermal conductivity, high insulation, low expansion, stable chemical properties, and high hardness. It is widely used in silicone rubber gloves, sealing rings , shoe materials and other supplies.
Paint
Using quartz powder to replace precipitated barium sulfate and talcum powder and other extender pigments in various dark-colored paints can not only play the role of filler, but also improve paint fineness, water resistance and anti-rust and anti-corrosion properties, while reducing raw material costs. Better economic benefits.
Electronics industry
Defect-free crystal single crystals have piezoelectric properties and can be used to manufacture resonators, filters, and are widely used in navigation, remote control, telemetry and electronic telecommunications equipment, etc.
Ceramic industry
Quartz has an important influence on the heating of ceramic bodies at room temperature. Before firing, quartz plays a role in adjusting the plasticity of the mud in the blank, and can reduce shrinkage during drying, shorten drying time and prevent the deformation of the blank; Firing shrinkage; and when a large amount of glass appears, quartz becomes the skeleton of ceramics, which can prevent defects such as bending and deformation of the green body during firing.
Fiber field
High-performance quartz glass products prepared from high-purity quartz sand are the basic raw materials for the production of optical fibers and auxiliary photoelectric components for the communication industry, and are used to produce single-mode and multi-mode optical fiber preforms and quartz sleeves.
Photovoltaic field
Crystalline silicon materials (both monocrystalline and polycrystalline) are the most common materials used in the photovoltaic industry for the production of solar cells. Quartz products are widely used in the solar photovoltaic industry, and the main product, quartz crucible, is a consumable used in the process of refining mono/polycrystalline silicon. In addition, in the production process of solar cells, various quartz glass materials and products are also the main process consumables, such as diffusion furnace tubes and flanges.
Semiconductor field
The processing of ultra-clean studio wafers and quartz crucibles are the applications of high-purity quartz products in the semiconductor industry. The semiconductor industry requires the use of high-purity quartz sand. Quartz crucible is used to grow single crystal silicon. The fused quartz has high thermal stability and purity, and is the raw material of quartz products used in the semiconductor industry. The main substrate material used for the photomask in the photolithography of semiconductor chips, and the diffusion, oxidation, and etching of silicon wafers in wafer production require a large amount of quartz wafers, quartz rings, quartz flanges, quartz boats, High-purity quartz products such as quartz cleaning tanks.
High-end equipment manufacturing field
Quartz glass has good optical properties, excellent light transmission and heat resistance from the ultraviolet region to the infrared region, and plays an important role in the field of special light sources. High-purity quartz is used as the basic raw material in the production and preparation of high-precision microscopic optical instruments, high-definition, high-transmittance optical lenses, excimer laser optical devices, projectors, and high-temperature resistant quartz lamp tubes.
Military and aviation
Quartz fiber is a high-performance inorganic fiber, and its raw material is high-purity quartz or natural quartz crystal. It maintains some of the properties and characteristics of solid quartz, is a good high temperature resistant material, and can be used as a reinforcement for advanced composite materials. At the same time, the purity of quartz fiber is very high (≥99.9%), which makes it have some good characteristics, such as strong ablation resistance, good temperature resistance, low thermal conductivity, high chemical stability, and relatively good dielectric properties. It is excellent and has important uses in military, national defense, aviation, aerospace and other industries.
In addition, quartz glass has high spectral transmission and will not be damaged by radiation, so it is also an ideal glass for spacecraft, wind tunnel windows and spectrophotometer optical systems. Safety glass and other fields have played an important role.