​The future of sapphire crystals

The future of sapphire crystals

Now, let's outline the near-term future for sapphire. The synthetic gemstone market is now estimated to exceed $6 billion. Worldwide, 300 tons of rubies and colored sapphires and 100 tons of sapphires were produced. According to experts, by 2008, the worldwide market for synthetic crystals will reach $11.3 billion; sapphire will account for a quarter of this total. The growth rate of sapphire production is very fast. We can expect a roughly tenfold increase in the production of sapphire worldwide over the next 20 years. Today, the leading producers of sapphire are the United States and Russia. In the United States, sapphire crystals are produced by the Czochralski, Kyropoulos, HEM, and EFG methods. In Russia, the Kyropoulos and Stepanov laws are in control. In Ukraine and Japan, sapphire productivity growth is accelerating. China is trying to hit the world market. Currently, the annual growth rate of sapphire device production capacity in China is 20%. However, the quality of these products is still unsatisfactory.

Since 2004, the world sapphire market has shown contradictory tendencies. World sapphire production has grown at an annual rate of 10% over the past 5 years, however, the average growth in demand for sapphire materials and devices over the past 2 years has exceeded 15-20%. At the same time, the technical requirements for the quality of the material itself and the working surface of sapphire devices have become more stringent.

The analysis that has been carried out shows that one of the most important issues in the development of sapphire production is the crystal size offered. This explanation is not only due to economic considerations, but also technical requirements. Large sized sapphire crystals are required for optical use and apertures of 600mm and larger for aviation windows (in the mid-wave infrared region of the spectrum). Today, the only material used for windows larger than 300mm is ZnSe. It has an ultimate strength of 69 MPa (10,000 pounds per square inch). Large size windows require a thickness of 20mm or more, which makes the windows very heavy and expensive. Also, it produces optical scattering in nature.

In contrast to the ZnSe window, the window made of sapphire is about 5mm thick and has no optical scattering at all. As the most recent studies have demonstrated, in order to make transparent armor, it is necessary to have large area (500 X 500 mm and 1,000 X 1,000 mm) windows on helicopters, special vehicles, and projects to build such armor have been carried out in the United States, Russia, Ukraine , the Czech Republic and other countries began construction. Laminated glass with a thickness of 25‐35mm would be comparable to armored glass with a thickness of 100mm. The upper layer of this sandwich glass will contain a thin layer of sapphire intended to absorb most of the kinetic energy of the bullet. The remainder of this energy will be absorbed by the glass and plastic layers.

The growth of large size sapphire crystals is a pressing issue. The requirement for this use is a large-scale crystallization plant that not only provides highly perfect crystals but can also be mass-produced. The use of such devices radically reduces energy and material consumption, thereby reducing costs. A crystal weighing 30, 100, 200, and even 500 kg is more profitable than an equal number of smaller crystals.

So, in general, sapphire, like silicon and germanium, will be a strategic commodity in materials science in the near future. The major trends in the sapphire industry will be to increase the size of crystal growth and to create process technologies to consistently obtain bulk sapphire.

Kunshan Shuojing Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. is involved in a wide range of new materials, and has complete preparation methods and means for functional ceramics and sapphire crystals, scintillation crystals, and laser crystals, forming optically transparent ceramics, sapphire optical windows, scintillation crystals, lasers and nonlinear crystals The main four series of high-tech products.