What are the uses of quartz?
Quartz is one of the most widely distributed minerals on the earth’s surface. The main component is SiO2. It is a resource with very stable physical and chemical properties.
Quartz glass generally has good light transmission, high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, electrical insulation, etc., so it is also widely used in high-tech product industries that require high temperature, corrosion resistance, light transmission, filtering and other production process environments.
The downstream of quartz glass is mainly concentrated in semiconductor, photovoltaic, optical fiber, electric light source, aerospace and other fields.
Quartz glass has a wide range of applications due to its excellent properties.
According to the statistics of China Powder Network, the semiconductor industry accounts for the largest proportion of quartz glass downstream applications, reaching 65%, followed by optical fibers and optics, accounting for 14% and 10% respectively.
In addition, quartz glass is also an important material for downstream industries such as photovoltaics and electric light sources.
In the semiconductor industry, high-purity, non-polluting, high-temperature resistant quartz glass materials and products are essential auxiliary materials, mainly used in:
1. Quartz ingots and quartz cylinders are used to manufacture semiconductor process diffusion, oxidation, deposition, etching Quartz flanges, quartz diffusers, and quartz bells used in the process;
2. Synthetic quartz ingots are the main substrates for photomask substrates for key components in flat panel display technology, and can be used to print electronic circuit boards in liquid crystal panels.
Photomask substrates are one of the main downstream applications of quartz glass in the semiconductor industry, and the output value of photomask substrates accounts for about 43% of the quartz glass materials used in semiconductors.
According to data from the International Semiconductor Association SEMI cited by CEDA, the total sales of the global photomask market in 2019 will exceed 4 billion US dollars, and the industry will maintain a continuous growth trend.
At present, the global photomask market is mainly concentrated in Taiwan, South Korea, etc. The market share in mainland China is relatively low, and there is a lot of room for improvement.
Quartz is mainly used for optical fiber preforms and auxiliary materials in the field of optical communication. Optical fiber preform is the core raw material for manufacturing silica series optical fiber.
Optical fiber is the neural network in the 5G intelligent era. With the 5G network construction cycle in the next 5-10 years, the demand for optical fiber will continue to grow.
5G, especially after the evolution from NSA to SA networking, the global optical fiber demand will increase, and will grow to 650 million kilometers by 2023. In the next five years, about 3 billion kilometers of optical fibers will be laid in the world.
According to 30,000 core kilometers, about 1 ton of optical fiber preform is consumed, and 1 ton of optical fiber preform consumes about 6.5 tons of silicon tetrachloride, which is calculated as 2.3 tons when converted to quartz. In 2023, the global optical fiber demand will be 650 million core kilometers, requiring about 21,667 tons of optical fiber preforms, corresponding to 49,833 tons of quartz.
With the increasing demand for quartz in different industries, the market demand for quartz cutting equipment and related consumables will also usher in important opportunities.
In order to meet the increasing demand for quartz, with the development of technology, a new type of quartz cutting method has emerged. Diamond wire loop cutting, simply put, is an extremely fast closed line with sharp diamonds on the line for cutting. .
Usually it is very suitable to use a diamond wire loop with a diameter of 0.6mm to cut quartz, here is a video of our cutting quartz:
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and here are more interesting applications .
