Tungsten, tantalum, niobium, hafnium and molybdenum … Refractory metals have extremely important uses in high-tech fields such as atomic energy, aerospace, electronic information and medical diagnosis and treatment that involve national security and national economy and people's livelihood. However, in the past 10 years, most of the tungsten resources consumed by the world ’s tungsten industry have come from China, causing the reserves of such high-quality strategic resources in China to drop significantly.
The project team composed of Beijing Institute of Technology, China's special metal material manufacturer and China Institute of Atomic Energy has made major breakthroughs in the development and application of high-end refractory metal products based on the use of secondary resources.
"By applying basic research and industrialization, the project team has opened up the full-chain industrialization technology from recycling waste to electronic-grade WF6 gas, ultra-high-purity tungsten parts and other products, and has broken through the high-efficiency fluorination preparation and purification of WF6. Manufacture of pure tungsten targets, tungsten heaters, and special-shaped tungsten crucibles by atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition. High-purity ultrafine tungsten powder based on tail gas plasma chemical method. F2 / NF3 and H2 by-products HF are produced by electrolysis. Key technologies such as the production and reduction of WF6, "said Tan Chengwen, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology in charge of the project team.
After about 10 years of hard work, the project team has developed a series of high-end products such as high-purity WF6, ultra-high-purity tungsten targets, high-purity tungsten parts for ion implanters, high-performance tungsten heating bodies, and high-purity shaped tungsten crucibles.
Tan Chengwen said that among them, high-purity WF6 has a purity of 99.999%, which meets the semiconductor industry's high-purity requirements for special gases. It has been widely used in Intel, Toshiba, TSMC, SMIC and other well-known semiconductor companies at home and abroad, and has a domestic market share. 80%, the international market share is nearly 25%, only 3 years to achieve a single product annual output value of more than 100 million yuan, the profit margin is greater than 20%. With the continuous improvement of technology, the use of products in related companies has increased significantly, breaking foreign monopolies. The purity of ultra-high-purity tungsten targets, high-purity tungsten parts for ion implanters, tungsten heating bodies, and special-shaped tungsten crucibles is 99.999999%.