Sapphire crystal material is an important basic material for current industry, owning marvelous optical properties, corrosion resistance, mechanical properties and chemical stability, which is extremely strong and hard. It can work at high temperatures close to 2000 degrees Celsius. In addition, it has good transmittance under ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, and microwave.
Benefiting from the huge demand of the LED industry and electronics industry, the total output of sapphire materials continues to increase rapidly, and the global market of sapphire crystal material will continue to expand. In 2018, total output value of the global industry of sapphire market was approximately US$4.6 billion, and even reached US$5.4 billion in 2019. It is estimated that by 2024, total output value of the global sapphire market will exceed US$10 billion.
In the sapphire material market, LED sapphire substrates are the most important application. Moreover, it dominates the whole sapphire material market. But with the continuous development of sapphire in the consumer electronics field, we will find split-new growth trend. For example, if all smartphones use sapphire covers, the demand for sapphire will increase sharply, which will drive demand of the sapphire material growth.
In the traditional sense, sapphires are mainly showed as handicrafts and jewelry. For consumers, it does occupy a higher position . However, with the development of sapphire scientific technology, we consumers could use various kinds of sapphires products easily. And various products have gradually penetrated into all aspects of our daily life. At present, sapphire products mainly include sapphire substrates, sapphire windows, sapphire substrates, and sapphire wafers.
Furthermore, with the development trend of high-speed, intelligent and multi-functional aviation equipment, civil aviation will also have a greater development. Key window materials are main raw materials of radar windows, photoelectric windows, three-in-one windows, photoelectric pods, so the large-size optical grade sapphire crystals have huge demand of market.
In the future, with medical equipment, environmental protection equipment, laser equipment, chemical equipment, high-vacuum testing equipment, textile industry fiber guides, scanning windows of bar code scanners, new generation mobile phone windows, photoelectric remote control windows, and camera protection lenses, projector protection prisms, wear-resistant bearings, high-end watches and other related industries, the demand for sapphire windows in the entire civilian field will further increase.
