Because of its excellent performance, precision ceramics are widely used in national defense, chemical industry, metallurgy, electronics, machinery, aviation, aerospace and biomedical fields, and become an important key material for the development of these fields. It has attracted great attention from developed countries, and its development also affects the development and progress of other industries to a large extent.

1. Industry status

At present, the development trend of rapid progress of precision ceramic technology, widening of application fields and stable growth of the market is obvious. Due to high technical barriers, the precision ceramics industry has long been monopolized by Japan, the United States and some European companies with unique technologies. Among them, Japan is the largest producer of precision ceramics, with complete categories, large output, wide application fields, and excellent comprehensive performance. It occupies a dominant position in the ceramic market, especially the electronic ceramic market. High temperature resistant structural ceramics is the focus of the development of precision ceramics in the United States. In addition, EU countries, especially Germany and France, have conducted key research in the field of structural ceramics, mainly in the fields of power generation equipment, new energy materials and ceramic devices in engines.

China has carried out research and development on almost all industrial precision ceramic materials, through the "sixth five-year", "seventh five-year" and "eighth five-year" research and development of scientific research projects such as "863", "973", "scientific and technological support" and "major special projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology", the research and development capacity of precision ceramic materials in China has been significantly improved.

Development of ceramic material preparation process in China:

In terms of powder preparation, the preparation methods of ceramic powder in China mainly include solid phase reaction method, liquid phase reaction method and gas phase reaction method. With the development of nanotechnology, the powder prepared by gas phase reaction method has the characteristics of large surface area, high sphericity and narrow particle size distribution, which provides a basic guarantee for the preparation of high-performance ceramics.

In terms of forming technology, the main forming technologies used in China's precision ceramic industry are cold isostatic pressing in dry pressing, injection molding in plastic forming, tape casting in slurry forming and gel injection molding.

In terms of sintering technology, China's precision ceramic industry mainly uses hot pressing sintering (HP) and gas pressure sintering (GPS) technology, the domestic large-size gas pressure sintering silicon nitride ceramics broke through the foreign technology blockade, to achieve technology localization.

In terms of precision processing technology, EDM, ultrasonic processing, laser processing and chemical processing technologies are gradually applied to ceramic processing.

2. Main problems and challenges facing our country

Compared with foreign precision ceramic industry, most of the precision ceramic products produced in China have low added value, and many ceramic components with high technical content in electronic complete machines still need to be imported in large quantities. Problems such as high purification of raw materials, high density of components, large size, complex shape and ceramic target materials need to be solved urgently. The performance indexes of some domestic materials have not yet reached the level of similar foreign materials, the precision of equipment is poor, and high-end equipment depends on imports; the combination of production, teaching and research is not close, the laboratory results are lack of attention, and the practical application is seriously out of touch.

At present, China's high-purity, ultra-fine, high-performance ceramic powder manufacturing technology and process and Japan and the United States and other countries have a large distance, high-end powder materials are still mainly imported. In addition, there is a big gap in the efficient dispersion technology of powder. The introduction of high-end equipment has improved our technical equipment level to a certain extent, but for enterprises, the investment is large and the economic pressure is great. With the development of domestic high-end preparation equipment, the demand for ceramic materials and components that can meet the performance requirements of specific materials is also increasing, but limited by the manufacturing level of high-end ceramic materials in China, it is still necessary to use imported materials to a large extent. In general, China's transformation from an advanced ceramic country to a powerful country mainly faces the following problems:

(I) lack of high-quality advanced ceramic powder raw material production enterprises

At present, although there are many domestic advanced ceramic powder raw material manufacturers, the performance of ceramic powder usually has greater dispersion and instability, which directly affects the performance and reliability of ceramic products prepared in subsequent batches. In recent years, there have been breakthroughs in the industrialization of some high quality oxide ceramic powders in China. For example, the nano-zirconia powders produced by Shandong Guoci and Guangdong Huawang Company using advanced hydrothermal hydrolysis technology have been widely used as dental materials for high-end bioceramics, occupying a large market share at home and abroad. Chaozhou Sanhuan produces high-strength and high-toughness zirconia special powder for mobile phone ceramic backplanes, it has been successfully used in many mobile phone ceramic backplanes such as Xiaomi 6, Xiaomi MIX2 and OPPO, and can withstand falling from different angles of 1 meter height without any fracture. The high-performance low-temperature sintered nano zirconia powder produced by Jiangxi Saiwei Company has been successfully applied to the ceramic ferrule of optical fiber connector, thus breaking the monopoly of Japanese Tosoh and other companies in this field.

However, the country has not yet reached this level in many other important structural ceramic powders, such as high-purity and easily sinterable alumina ceramic powders, which are still dependent on imports from Daming Corporation of Japan, Sumitomo Corporation, Showa Electric, as well as Nabot Corporation of Germany, Amay Corporation and some French companies. In particular, high-performance non-oxide ceramic powders, such as silicon nitride, aluminum nitride, silicon carbide, boron carbide, zirconium boride and other covalent bond ceramic powders, lack of first-class production suppliers in China. For example, the silicon nitride powder used to prepare high-strength ceramic bearings is mainly imported from Japan's UBE Company (UBE Company for short) and Swedish companies; while the aluminum nitride ceramic powder for high thermal conductivity substrates used for semiconductor chip packaging is mainly imported from Japan's companies such as Desayama Caoda, while the high-performance silicon carbide ceramic powder needs to be imported from France's Saint-Gobain Company, high quality powders such as boron carbide for bulletproof armor and zirconium boride for ultra-high temperature ceramics need to be imported from German companies such as H.C.Starck. In particular, there is a big gap in nuclear-grade boron carbide raw materials for neutron absorption in nuclear power plants. Dalian Jinma Boron Industry is a powerful enterprise in the research and development and production of high-performance boron carbide powder in China, which is narrowing the gap with the international advanced level. These high-end ceramic powders that rely on imports will be placed in extreme danger once they are stuck (similar to ZTE chips).

The technology and equipment of (II) large-scale production are relatively backward.

Although my country's high-performance structural ceramic production technology has been greatly improved, there is still a big gap in key process technology and equipment, and the performance and reliability of domestic equipment are still difficult to reach the international advanced level. Due to the structural ceramic production process equipment, including powder processing devices, various molding equipment, different types of high-temperature sintering furnace, precision grinding processing equipment, most of them are not general machinery and equipment on the market; the development of these special equipment and its performance and reliability are different from imported equipment, which is reflected in the accuracy, reliability and stability of the equipment and life. Including like ceramic powder spray granulation device, injection molding machine, atmosphere pressure sintering furnace, hot isostatic pressing sintering furnace, ceramic finishing grinding equipment, machining center (CNC), etc. For example, the precision injection molding technology of ceramic powder has been rapidly developed in recent years, which can prepare high value-added ceramic products with complex shapes and fine internal structures, such as ceramic ferrule, ceramic scalpel, ceramic joint, etc. However, due to the controllable precision of the molding and sintering process and the subsequent precision machining equipment, products such as ceramic split knives, which are widely used in the semiconductor industry, cannot be commercially produced, also need to import from Japan, the United States, Switzerland.

The technological innovation and engineering ability of (III) enterprises is still weak.

Although there are thousands of domestic enterprises with advanced structural ceramic materials, most of them are small and medium-sized enterprises. Due to the current lack of professional and technical personnel (including engineers and technical workers) in such enterprises, and the R & D strength is relatively weak, especially the ceramic process engineers and machining engineers with more than ten years of R & D and production experience are hard to find. Therefore, the R & D of new products and new processes is not as fast and conditionally guaranteed as foreign companies. Even if the achievements of universities and scientific research institutes are transformed into enterprises through the combination of production, teaching and research, due to the lack of engineering and technical personnel and the limitations of process equipment in enterprises, the time period for rapid industrialization and scale is relatively long, so the favorable opportunity to enter the market is often lost. It can be seen that there is a serious lack of engineers and technical research and development personnel in China's advanced ceramic industry, has become a major bottleneck restricting the development of the entire industry.