China Has Become The World's Largest Exporter Of Superhard Materials Upstream And Downstream Industries

China has become the world's largest exporter of superhard materials upstream and downstream industries.

 

Recently, the Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs issued an announcement, announcing that from September 15 this year, antimony-related items such as antimony ore and raw materials, metallic antimony and products, and superhard material-related items shall not be exported without permission. Among them, superhard material-related items include six-sided top press equipment, key components for six-sided top press (including hinge beams, top hammers, and high-pressure control systems with a synthetic pressure greater than 5 gigapascals), microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) equipment, diamond window materials, and the process technology for synthesizing artificial diamond single crystals or cubic boron nitride single crystals using six-sided top presses, and the technology for manufacturing listed six-sided top press equipment.
"It is of great significance to implement export controls on superhard material-related products." Sun Zhaoda, Secretary-General of the Superhard Materials Branch of the China Machine Tool Industry Association, said that superhard materials are a general term for composite materials made of diamond, cubic boron nitride, and these two materials as the main components. The upstream is mainly raw and auxiliary materials and special equipment, and the downstream is various products and functional devices made of superhard materials.

(China supplies a large amount of high-quality and cheap synthetic diamond abrasives to the world)

Based on their excellent performance, superhard materials and products have become the only choice for ultra-precision processing, high-speed and efficient processing, and green environmental protection processing in the civilian field, and are widely used in key national economic fields such as high-end CNC machine tools, chip manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, photovoltaic new energy, oil and gas drilling, and biomedicine. In the military field, it can not only be used as a processing tool and advanced material that must be used in extreme environment manufacturing to solve the problem of efficient and precise processing of difficult-to-process materials in various fields, but also play an excellent performance in functional applications to solve the use of functional devices in the fields of national defense, aerospace, nuclear industry, integrated circuits, and new generation information technology, such as high-power gallium nitride device heat sinks, laser weapon windows, missile fairings, aircraft hanging window materials, and ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor materials.

According to statistics from the China Machine Tool Industry Association, the output value of China's superhard materials (including upstream and downstream) has ranked first in the world and exceeded 100 billion yuan. The output of abrasive-grade artificial diamonds has exceeded 20 billion carats, accounting for more than 95% of the world. Its upstream special manufacturing equipment, the six-sided top press, is almost entirely supplied by China, and special MPCVD equipment accounts for about 50% of the world; cubic boron nitride is about 600 million carats, accounting for about 75% of the world, and the output of large-size artificial diamond single crystals has exceeded 15 million carats, accounting for about 50% of the world, and composite superhard materials have also reached more than 50%; downstream diamond wire saws account for more than 95% of the world, and diamond cutting, grinding and polishing products for stone and ceramic fields account for more than 60% of the world.

 

Sun Zhaoda pointed out that based on the above product output advantages, China has become the largest exporter of upstream and downstream industries of superhard materials in the world.

 

Diamond materials in superhard materials are not only the hardest substances known to date, but also have excellent properties in sound, light, electricity, magnetism, and heat. They are known as the "king of materials" and "ultimate semiconductors" and are one of the most promising materials in the 21st century. The Wassenaar Arrangement has implemented export controls on products and technologies related to superhard materials such as diamonds, and the United States and other countries have also included related products and technologies in the control list.

"my country's control over products and technologies related to superhard materials is conducive to promoting the rational use of products and technologies related to superhard materials in various fields around the world, especially to ensuring the peaceful use of related products in various fields, which is in line with international common practices." Sun Zhaoda emphasized.