Development of advanced ceramic materials industry
Advanced ceramic materials refer to ceramic materials with excellent performance, which are different from traditional ceramics in terms of raw materials and processes. They are usually made of high-purity and ultra-fine raw materials, through the design of composition and structure, and using precise chemical measurements and new preparation technologies. . The rapid development of this new generation of ceramic materials with special properties has become the cornerstone of the continuous progress of modern science and technology.
Advanced ceramic materials can be divided into structural ceramics and functional ceramics according to their uses and properties. Structural ceramics refer to ceramic materials with excellent mechanical, thermal and chemical properties, such as high strength, high hardness, corrosion resistance, wear resistance and high temperature resistance properties, and used in various structural components.
Functional ceramics are dielectric materials that can detect, transform, store, couple and transmit information such as electricity, magnetism, sound, light, heat, force, chemistry or biology. Advanced ceramic materials have a wide range of functions and uses, primarily including high temperature Thermal protection, wave transmission, high toughness, ferroelectricity, piezoelectric, dielectric, pyroelectric, semiconductor, electro-optical and magnetic functions, and suitable for electronic information, integrated circuits, computers, automatic control, national defense industry, aerospace, Modern high-tech fields such as biomedicine, ocean ultrasound, communication technology, automobiles and energy.
Therefore, advanced ceramic materials have become indispensable key materials in some major national projects and cutting-edge technologies, with important scientific value and national strategic significance for future development. For example, electronic functional ceramic materials, with their high performance and wide range of applications , has become an important cornerstone of the development of modern information technology, a key basic material for many new electronic components, and occupies a very important strategic position in the national economy and national defense construction.
International development status and trends of advanced ceramics industry
From the perspective of the development of the global advanced ceramic materials industry, the main advanced ceramics producing countries in Europe include Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Italy, of which Germany produces and consumes 37% of the European advanced ceramics market. France and the United Kingdom account for 39% of the total market . According to data in recent years, there are more than 150 advanced ceramic manufacturers in the European and American markets, but more than 65% of advanced ceramics are produced by seven multinational companies.
Large companies producing advanced ceramics in Europe include France’s Saint-Gobain, Germany’s Ceram Tec and Britain’s Morgan. In addition, there are a number of professional small and medium-sized ceramic raw material companies (such as Stark) and sintering equipment companies (such as FCT) in Germany . Saint-Gobain is one of the top 100 companies in the world, a pioneer in the world’s industrial engineering materials, ranked 188th among Fortune 500 companies, with annual sales revenue of more than 3 billion US dollars, of which high-performance ceramic materials account for 15%.
Not long ago, Saint-Gobain acquired the famous American companies Carborundum and Norton Ceramics. Ceram Tec is the largest technical ceramics company in Germany. It produces a variety of advanced ceramic materials and applies them to various fields of modern industry and biomedicine. Morgan is a company with An enterprise whose main products are carbon materials and advanced ceramics, with more than 160 production plants in more than 60 countries.
There are some well-known ceramic companies in the United States, such as CoorsTec, Corning, and Cerradian, as well as some professional manufacturers of advanced ceramics for the defense and military industries, such as Raytheon Company and Surmet Corporation. The United States is not only a major producer of advanced ceramics , is also the largest consumer of advanced ceramics. Its production is less than its consumption. Therefore, many products are imported from Japan, Europe and China.
Large companies producing advanced ceramics in the United States include CoorsTec and Corning. CoorsTec is the largest supplier of technical ceramics in the United States, producing a variety of precision ceramic parts, electric vacuum ceramics, ceramic substrates for the semiconductor industry and ceramic parts for semiconductor equipment.
As the basis for ceramic applications, the high-quality powder market continues to show growth momentum and is essentially monopolized by a few manufacturers in Japan, Germany and France. The largest silicon carbide powder manufacturer is Ukushima Electric, with an output of approximately 100 tons/year, followed by H.C. -STARCK, with an output of about 50 tons/year, and Saint-Gobain, with an output of about 30 tons/year. Advanced ceramic materials produced by European and American ceramic multinational companies mainly include porous ceramics, transparent ceramics, nuclear ceramics, thermal protection ceramics, ceramic substrates, and electronic ceramics and bioceramics.
