The future has come, the 5G era opens new markets for new materials such as sapphire

Materials are the source of perceiving the future world and realizing disruptive innovation. Today's world is undergoing a large-scale and deep-level technological revolution and industrial transformation. With the advent of the 5G era, the material revolution of consumer electronic product appearance protective parts has quietly begun.

With the advent of the era of 5G high-frequency communication and the popularization of wireless charging technology, higher requirements are put forward for the signal transmission of mobile phone shells. "Demetalization" is the general trend, and non-metallic materials such as glass, sapphire, ceramics and other back covers will replace them. The metal case becomes the mainstream.

How to make a wear-resistant and drop-resistant mobile phone cover has always been one of the problems that smart phones need to break through. The dielectric constant of sapphire is 1.3 times that of Gorilla Glass, which makes the touch screen more sensitive and has a large hardness that can withstand knife strokes. All kinds of wear and tear, continue to ensure the sensitivity and response speed of the touch screen; it can be made thinner, further reducing the thickness of the fuselage; the refractive index is higher, and the visual experience is improved.

Sapphire is widely used in LED substrates, electronic camera protective covers, smart watch screen protective covers, sensor protective covers, etc. At present, Apple Watch's purchase of sapphire single crystals will exceed 18% of the total global sapphire single crystal production. According to statistics, the global wearable market shipments in 2018 were approximately 172.2 million units, of which smartwatch shipments reached 51.31 million, a year-on-year increase of 54.3%.

The industry predicts that by 2021, the market size of smart phone sapphire covers will grow from US$230 million in 2016 to US$13.98 billion, and the market size of sapphire covers for smart watches will grow from US$240 million to US$620 million.

As a new material, sapphire is not a mineral gemstone mined from nature, but a transparent crystal artificially synthesized by putting alumina powder in a special equipment through high temperature and high pressure.

The process of artificially synthesizing crystals is called "crystal growth". The crystal material produced in this way has hardness second only to diamond, good optical, thermal, dielectric and excellent mechanical properties, etc., after physical cutting, polishing, silk screen and other processes, it can be processed into window protection products.