Fujian, China one Chinese company is high-tech manufacturing company which engaged in sapphire crystal growth and its subsidiary products processing. This company last year invested 60 million RMB to introduce 10 sets sapphire growth furnace, and this year formally put into production in batches. It expected to achieve annual output value of 50 million RMB.

Tungsten crucible is an important component in sapphire growth furnace. The quality of tungsten crucible largely affects the quality and application range of sapphire. The following will detail describe crucible tungsten.

Tungsten crucible is one of tungsten products usually using powder metallurgy method to produce. It has a lot of excellent properties, such as high melting point, high boiling point, high strength, corrosion resistance and so on, which are widely used in sapphire growth furnace, quartz glass melting furnace, rare earth smelting furnace, as the core container industry of the furnace. For sapphire single crystal growth, tungsten crucible has a high purity, high density, crack-free, precise size, smooth inner and outer walls and other features is conducive to produce high performance sapphire single crystal. Sapphire has high hardness (Mohs hardness 9), only second to diamond. It has good transparency, high hardness, wear resistance, high temperature resistance properties, good thermal conductivity and electrical insulation and other properties. Currently sapphire as an important new material, which is generally as rosy window materials, LED substrate, laser matrix, optical components, watches and mobile phones’ touch cover and is widely used in science and technology field, military field, electronics industry and other industry. Sapphire has stable chemical and physical property, the applications range of in the industry is gradually expanding. With the growth and development of sapphire industry, tungsten crucible will be developed to a certain extent in the future.

With the rapid development of sapphire glass industry, it is widely applied and industry chain gradually improved. China mainland has cost advantage and it is expected to become the world's tungsten crucible made sapphire Industry Center. At present, China mainland sapphire industry gradually became mature forming a complete industrial chain from the crystal growth furnace equipment, crystal growth to processing. China mainland currently has many excellent sapphire manufacturers and its maturity production technology is not lost on China Taiwan.

China became the dominant sapphire industry center have the following main points:
1.Low electricity cost: Sapphire production energy consumption is very large, accounting for a large proportion of the sapphire cost. To a large extent, the price of electricity will significantly affect the sapphire cost. China has a certain electricity price advantage. What’s more, many manufacturers will select manufacturing address at someplace where it has lower electricity cost, and select the big city for high-tech processing.

2.Sufficient raw material: The main raw material of sapphire crystal is aluminum oxide. China is the world's largest alumina producer. Recently the price of aluminum oxide is steady decline, which is a big advantage for China's sapphire manufacturers. China alumina raw materials are sufficient, not only reduces the cost of production, it may also provide a chance for large-scale sapphire production.

3.Tax rate protection: China Customs sets sapphire as luxury so there are 17%consumption tax and 11% added-value tax of sapphires. So to import sapphire requires higher taxes. And with China's sapphire industrial development and growth, the advantages of import sapphire are reduced.

4.Production equipment advantages: tungsten crucible is an essential component for the sapphire production in sapphire growth furnace which plays a vital role for sapphire production. China is the largest tungsten producer and has mature technology for tungsten crucible production which is a big advantage for sapphire.

5. Market: With the development of economy and technology, China has a large sapphire market.

Amazon's technology companies in the 2016 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) displays the company's first wearable projector-ASU Cast One. ASU Cast One using the world's smallest laser projector module and tungsten crucible made sapphire touchpad, through new technology R & D and designation, comparing with conventional wearable products there are a series of innovations on ASU Cast One.

ASU Cast One projection screen between 2-60 inches, it can be projected on the back of the hand, on the desktop, on the walls and floor. ASU Cast One has many excellent features such as high-resolution (1280 x 600 pixels), supporting 720P video playing, while the product is made of tungsten crucible made sapphire touchpad supporting multi-finger touch. In addition, the ASU Cast One also supports ADI gesture recognition, which can be operated within 20cm range of projected image. Hardware, this product uses Qualcomm processor platform, running U OS operating system which supports multiple themes dial and personalized settings.

Touchpad is input device using the finger sliding the cursor to operation. It is a pressure sensitive device, if not properly protected, the touchpad is easily corrupted. Tungsten crucible made sapphire touchpad not only high hardness but wear resistance, can increase the life of the touchpad, so it has been a lot of consumers.

Sapphire glass as an important material for emerging industry, and has broad room for growth in the future application market. Currently sapphire single is often used as crystal substrate material of LED chip and as camera, fingerprint identification’s cover plate martial to use in various fields. On the other hand, using tungsten crucible can produce fine performance sapphire glass, so many sapphire manufacturers prefer to use tungsten crucible for sapphire production. Sapphire  industry gradually growth and it also will promote tungsten crucible industry development.

Anti-glare glass is mainly used for aviation, diving table or the mirror surface with big radian. The main principle of anti-glare glass is plated multilayer film on the mirror to prevent light refraction. Anti-glare glass is divided into double-sided anti-glare glass and single-side anti-glare glass, little difference between these two kinds of anti-glare glass, only different in number of coatings. Double-sided anti-glare glass plated on both sides of glass, and single-sided anti-glare glass only plated the inside side.

Watch glass mirror materials used are: acrylic, generally mineral glass and tungsten crucible made sapphire crystal glass. Acrylic is kind of soft texture, easy processing, but wearing resistance is not good. Generally mineral glass mirror is more widely used in watch, having medium hardness. Tungsten crucible made sapphire crystal glass not only has high hardness, but also has good wear resistance so many senior watch brands like to use it as mirror material. Double-sided anti-glare sapphire mirror can be applied to some other special areas. Anti-glare tungsten crucible made sapphire crystal can avoid the light then causing refraction, so it has a good light transmittance and the transmittance rate can reach to 99%.

Production of tungsten crucible made sapphire crystal glass
1. The raw material is placed in a tungsten crucible at 1200 ℃ high temperature decomposition of clean crystal composition.
2. The resulting crystal materials is sintered at 2050 ℃ to obtain the desired crystal bar.
3. After artificial screening, ensure the quality of the resulting sapphire crystal glass.
4. After cutting crystal bar, then using grinding miller to grind sapphire glass surface, grinding work at least four or more times to reach the bright and transparent mirror effect.
5. Finally, to process optical processing on grinded mirror, at a high temperature of 280 ℃coating on the optical media specific material on double-sided.

Provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps industrial departments and the relevant central enterprises:

According to reports, the US local time on January 5, Huawei and Swarovski launched its first women-only AndroidWear smart watches. The smart watch called HUWEI WATCH Jewel and Elegant is specifically for women consumers to create.

The watch is 44mm round dial and on the top of dial inlaid with 68 Swarovski rhinestones diameter of 1.5mm. In addition, the dial plate was made by sapphire glass mirror and the highest pixel density of the display, so that the watch has the best display and scratch resistant properties. The body of the smart watch is stainless steel and white and blue crocodile calfskin strap of watch is from Italy. What’s more, there pre-installed 40 kinds of dial patterns in the watch, including 10 female models are exclusive designs.

HUWEI WATCH Jewel and Elegant smart watch equipped with Android Wear operating system, which can interact with smart phone having Android 4.3 or above iOS8.2 system to achieve Bluetooth interaction, message alerts and other functions. On the other hand, the watch also supports sports health monitoring and heart rate monitoring.

Tungsten crucible because of its good properties commonly used in the sapphire growth furnace, so cultivated sapphire single crystal has good characteristics. In addition, to obtain excellent performance of sapphire, process selection and temperature field setting is also very critical. According to different crystal growth methods of sapphire crucible used are not the same. Using kyropoulos method to produce sapphire usually use tungsten crucible. Using heat exchange method to produce sapphire usually use molybdenum crucible, because in the last step will broke the crucible to take single crystal and molybdenum crucible is relatively cheap than tungsten crucible. Using tungsten crucible to produce sapphire has many good characteristics such as high strength, high hardness, and wear resistance and so on, so it is widely used in mobile phones and watch screen and other areas, with good prospects for future development.

United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to grant Apple Inc a new patent in the local time on February 3, the patent called "Proximity and multi-touch sensor detection and demodulation" It can perceive sensor at close range and can cooperate with traditional multi-touch screen to extend user control area beyond the screen, thereby detecting the non-contact gesture. This technology is somewhat different with 3D Touch pressure touch technology of iPhone6s. 3D Touch measures the intensity of the user touch down, and the new 3D suspension gesture control patent measures user actions over the screen.

The industry is committed to study the non-contact interaction, such as through the camera and certain other long-distance optical system to operate long range gesture control. Apple's 3D suspension gesture control patent operational mechanism is as follow: LED light irradiation on the user's finger, returned after being captured by the photodiode to achieve controlling iPhone without touch the screen. The system can detect fingers, hands and other objects which suspended over the screen

As we known, tungsten crucible cultivated sapphire crystal with high hardness, high light transmittance, wear resistance and other excellent physical and chemical properties, favored by many. Sapphire often use as LED substrates, currently, LED sapphire substrate material on the market has sapphire, silicon and silicon carbide. Sapphire as LED substrate material has many advantages: Firstly, the sapphire substrate production technology is mature, having better quality; secondly, sapphire has excellent physical property and stability chemical property can be used in high temperature growth process; thirdly, sapphire has high mechanical strength, easy handling and cleaning; and finally, the price is reasonable. Although the sapphire has poor thermal conductivity, and there is no major impact on small current work. Thus sapphire using in LED lighting is more widely.

If you thought that Graphene is going to be the next do-everything material, we are sorry to tell you that you are wrong! According to Journal of Power Sources: Multi-use titanium dioxide which is expected to turn into nano-fiber will become a best material to replace Graphene due to the quantum high loading and surface catalytic activity, the microscopic reaction mechanism, cheap TiO₂ Crystal.



TiO₂ is made by forming titanium dioxide crystals into nano-fibers, then forming those nano-fibers into flexible membranes. The scientists who developed the material are hoping that it can help with two of the world’s biggest problems: a lack of clean drinking water and the need for clean, renewable energy. So far, the applications of TiO₂ include producing clean water, energy, hydrogen, and killing bacteria, being formed into flexible solar cells, and even extend the useful lifespan of batteries. What’s more is that the materials used to make TiO₂ are cheap and readily available, making its possibilities nearly endless.

Previously, breakthrough in high-end application of titanium dioxide is occurred frequently. In the super capacitor manufacturing process, Australia found an insulating material—Rutile coating with indium-niobium compounds (TiO₂) which can store more electricity, but loss less. Therefore, According to USTC, TiO₂ is expected to achieve application in organic solar cell preparation and solar energy translates into chemical energy of environmental protection and other aspects.

US Apple company (Apple Inc.) purchased a large number of sapphire glass, and proposed the "electronic device housing ceramic protective glass" patent. This patent describes the technology in detail of how to install sapphire glass in iPhone. iPhone6 ​​/ 6s launched in 2015 failed using sapphire screen, but Apple Inc did not stop research the application of sapphire glass on the phone. According to the patent released by Apple Inc shows that the company is planning a new sapphire screen technology. In addition, the company also plans to add reinforced ceramic material in the housing frame, such as ceramic fibers or other material. Many people speculated that iPhone7’s phone screen will likely use sapphire screen.

The chemical composition of sapphire crystal is alumina (α-Al2O3), and it is composed of three oxygen atoms and two aluminum atoms by covalently bonded type. Sapphire crystal widely used in smart phones, mainly because the sapphire crystal has many good characteristics such as high hardness, high temperature, wear resistance, chemical corrosion resistance and chemical stability and so on.

Tungsten products as the important material in sapphire growth furnace for sapphire single crystal production quality have a greater impact. Tungsten crucible is an important carrier of sapphire single crystal growth furnace, mainly because tungsten crucible has high purity, high density, crack-free, smooth inner and outer walls and other features. In addition, tungsten is an insoluble and refractory metal which is hard to react with aluminum. Thereby it can produce sapphire single crystal with good performance. Using Kyropoulos method to nurture sapphire single crystal in sapphire growth furnace was heating alumina by tungsten crucible to above 2050 ℃, then gradually lower the melting temperature, crystallized to be finished.