The price of high-purity quartz sand, a scarce material that cannot be bypassed by photovoltaics, has doubled due to the gap between supply and demand.

01

What is high purity quartz sand?

Quartz sand, also known as silica sand, is a silicon dioxide material processed from natural crystals and quartz minerals or chemically synthesized. Quartz products have the characteristics of high hardness and low expansion coefficient, and perform well in high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, light transmission, chemical stability, electrical insulation, etc., and are widely used in casting, building materials, electric light sources, optical fibers, photovoltaics, etc. , semiconductor and other fields.

The performance of quartz sand can be significantly improved with the increase of purity, so purity is the main parameter to distinguish the quality of quartz sand, and also the main basis for determining the use of quartz sand. There is no unified division standard for quartz sand. According to the purity, it can be roughly divided into silica, ordinary quartz sand, refined quartz sand and high-purity quartz sand. Quartz sand of different purity has differences in high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, light transmission, etc., so the application scenarios are also clearly distinguished, ranging from basic silicate building materials to precision instrument manufacturing. In addition, hardness, particle size, color, etc. are also important parameters of quartz sand.

Among them, quartz crucible is a quartz device used to store polycrystalline silicon raw materials or single crystal recycled materials. It is mainly used in photovoltaic and semiconductor fields. It can support continuous crystal pulling under high temperature conditions and is a key component in the process of producing single crystal silicon wafers.

The raw material of the quartz crucible is mainly high-purity quartz sand, and the auxiliary materials are graphite electrodes and quartz plates. Among them, high-purity quartz sand (quartz sand with SiO2 purity above 99.99%) accounts for 60%-70% of the total cost of the quartz crucible. Downstream industries have strict standards for the purity, cleanliness, and precision of quartz crucibles, and the quality of high-purity quartz sand is the key to determining the quality of crucibles. Based on the purity requirements, the quartz crucible is scrapped after one or several times of heating and pulling, and has strong consumer product attributes.

02

double in a year

The price of high-purity quartz sand is running at a high level

Against the backdrop of high installed capacity of photovoltaics, the expansion of its market demand is certain. Due to the insufficient supply of high-purity quartz sand, especially inner layer sand, the supply of quartz crucibles continues to fall short of demand, especially high-quality quartz crucibles, resulting in a rapid rise in the price of quartz crucibles.

From January to July 22, the average price of high-purity quartz sand excluding tax reached 42,000 yuan/ton, a year-on-year increase of up to 95%. According to China Powder Network News, as of January 31, 23, the prices of high-purity quartz sand for 4N5 photovoltaics in Shandong and Jiangsu were both 40,000-50,000 yuan/ton; The price is 50,000 yuan/ton and above, and the price of the inner layer sand reaches 80,000-90,000 yuan/ton. In addition, imported sand exceeded 100,000 yuan/ton, while the price of imported sand at the beginning of 22 was only 45,000 yuan/ton, a year-on-year increase of more than 100%.

However, the shortage of high-purity quartz sand restricts the output of single crystals, which directly drives up the price of silicon wafers during the price decline of silicon materials. On March 3, LONGi Green Energy’s official website announced the latest price of P-type silicon wafers. Compared with the previous quotation, 166mm and 182mm silicon wafers rose to 5.61 and 6.50 yuan/piece, respectively, an increase of 3.9% and 4.0%.

03

Persistence of supply-demand gap

Will support the price of high-purity quartz sand

The photovoltaic industry is the most important growth point for the current demand for high-purity quartz sand.

According to the "Global High-purity Quartz Resources Status, Production, Consumption and Trade Pattern", the downstream of my country's high-purity quartz sand is mainly concentrated in semiconductors (50%), optical communications (23%), photovoltaics (17%) and other fields.

At present, the continuous expansion of photovoltaic installed capacity and the increase of silicon wafer production have led to a rapid increase in the total demand for photovoltaic quartz crucibles. At the same time, the inner layer sand has high requirements on purity and relies on imports, but the supply elasticity of imports is insufficient. At present, the supply of imported sand is in short supply, and domestic substitution is accelerating. The quality of domestic sand may shorten the life of the crucible and increase the amount of crucible.

In addition, the market share of N-type monocrystalline silicon wafers is gradually increasing, and the service life of N-type silicon wafers produced by quartz crucibles is shorter than that of P-type silicon wafers, thereby increasing the consumption of quartz crucibles; and the trend of large-size silicon wafers promotes the trend of quartz crucibles to large With the development of globalization, the average amount of quartz sand used in a single crucible will increase, and multiple factors drive the demand for quartz crucibles and high-purity quartz sand.

Professional institutions have split and calculated the downstream structure, and believe that the domestic demand for high-purity sand above 3N grade will reach 574,000 tons in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 16.0%, and the compound growth rate from 2022 to 2025 will be 10.6%.

Photovoltaic-grade high-purity sand is the most elastic, with a compound growth rate of 25.1% from 2022 to 2025, and the proportion of demand will increase from 17.2% in 2019 to 44.9% in 2025. Among them, the global photovoltaic quartz crucible market demand in 2023 is 1.063 million, a year-on-year increase of 28.80%, corresponding to the market demand for high-purity quartz sand of 106,000 tons, a year-on-year increase of 62.22%.

However, it is difficult to keep up with the growth of the supply side. At present, the expansion process of the high-purity quartz sand industry is slow, and the tight balance between supply and demand will continue.

Due to the highly concentrated distribution of high-purity quartz deposit resources, the low degree of development and utilization, and the existence of barriers in purification technology (equipment + process), there are currently few companies in the world that can supply high-purity quartz sand in batches, and the industry is mainly dominated by three major companies. Including overseas suppliers U.S. Unimin and Norway Tiankuoshi (TQC), as well as domestic suppliers Quartz.

According to the information of the Silicon Industry Branch, the expansion progress of two overseas quartz sand companies is not as good as expected, and when the production capacity of new silicon wafer companies climbs up, a large number of crucibles are purchased, resulting in a periodic shortage of quartz crucibles, which affects the start of silicon wafer companies to a certain extent. rate increase. According to calculations, it is expected that the supply and demand gap of high-purity quartz sand for photovoltaic use in 2023 and 2024 will be 15,000 and 6,000 tons respectively, which is expected to further push up the price of high-purity quartz sand.