The main reason why the material experts of Huaxing Group use this niobium oxide material a lot, mainly because the price of this niobium oxide is cheaper than the silicon carbide whisker material and several other whisker materials produced by itself.

Although Huaxing Group Co., Ltd. has truly achieved high crystalline, high purity, and high purity in the high-end material of silicon carbide whisker material. Mass production, now the output has reached thousands of tons, but the cost is still too high, a kilogram of silicon carbide whisker material alone cost about 5,000 yuan, now the price on the market is about 15,000 yuan, before the production of this material neon state-owned company, the price was sold to more than 20,000 yuan, with the Huaxing Group company also achieved mass production, the price dropped to less than 15,000.

Huaxing Group is not in a hurry to reduce prices, but also wants to enjoy a period of profiteering, if new players join in, the price is not too late.

Because most of the other manufacturers are now in the theoretical or experimental stage, most of the products have many shortcomings such as low crystallinity, many product impurities, and difficulty in mass production.

Moreover, these high-end materials of Huaxing Group are mainly used by themselves, and the amount sold to the market is not much.

The price of niobium oxide on the market is less than 1,000 yuan per kilogram, and Huaxing Group uses more in this material, mainly in automobile engines and gearboxes, fuel cell stacks, mobile phone parts, etc., and uses a large amount.

It is precisely in this way that Longyuan Rare Earth Technology has also laid out the deep processing of niobium resources very early, mainly to reduce the cost of using these materials more significantly.

Of course, Xue Baohui also attaches great importance to the research and development of another scandium metal.

The properties of scandium are similar to those of other rare earth elements, and the performance is more superior, and it is completely feasible to partially replace the related rare earth elements in steel and non-ferrous alloys.

Scandium can improve the strength, hardness, heat resistance, corrosion resistance, etc. of alloys, and has a very broad application prospect in the field of alloys.

Scandium is added to nickel, chromium and tungsten-based heat-resistant superalloys, which can significantly improve its oxidation resistance and corrosion resistance, and improve the ability of materials to resist neutron radiation damage.

Moreover, scandium makes the graphite nodularization in cast iron more effective than rare earth elements, which can significantly improve the performance of castings, and the addition of scandium to the welding filler of high-chromium alloy can greatly improve the tensile strength of the weld, and it also has a very good effect when added to magnesium-based and titanium-based alloys.

Liu Fuping also participated in the research of scandium in the field of alloys when he worked at Honeywell, and also has rich experience.

Now Huaxing Group has several teams in the research of scandium metal, the research of the Institute of Electrochemistry is mainly to develop scandium oxide in the electrode material of fuel cells, because the stable zirconia system of scandium oxide scandium oxide has high conductivity, and the passing ability of oxygen ions is more than double that of other metal-doped zirconia systems, and the volume can be reduced by about half under the same output power conditions.

This material is not only suitable for hydrogen fuel cells, but also for solid oxide fuel cells.

In fact, the Institute of Electrochemistry is not only developing low-temperature hydrogen fuel electrolyte battery technology, but also developing high-temperature solid oxide fuel cells.

Because this solid oxide fuel cell can not only use hydrogen fuel, but also methane, coal gas and biomass gas as fuel, the applicability is greater, and the Institute of Electrochemistry will not miss it.

The research and development of scandium metal by Huaxing Semiconductor Materials Company and Defense Group Company is mainly focused on the research and development of cubic crystal form scandium oxide laser crystal materials.

Because scandium metal has high refractive index, high bandwidth, high thermal conductivity and other excellent properties, so as a laser material to receive widespread attention is also a normal thing, now Huaxing Group has prepared a scandium laser matrix crystal material, the biggest advantage of this material is high efficiency, under the same conditions is 2 times to 4 times the laser efficiency of fiber lasers.

Now the prepared material has begun trial production on the laser weapons of the defense group company.

The supply of this scandium oxide product on the market is still very small, the price is still very expensive, the price fluctuates greatly, a kilogram of scandium oxide is also in the tens of thousands of yuan, the domestic output is also about 20 tons, mainly from the material is mainly extracted from the titanium dioxide waste liquid, Longyuan Rare Earth Technology Co., Ltd. also has such a production line, the output is also in 500 kilograms, and now the goal of research and development is to separate scandium from rare earths.

The production quantity of scandium oxide abroad is also about 20 tons, because in nature, scandium is a typical dispersed lithophilic element, which can rarely form a significant rich collective, but is widely dispersed in various rock-forming minerals and scandium-containing minerals.

There are more than 800 kinds of scandium-containing minerals in nature, but there are very few minerals with a scandium oxide content greater than 5/10,000, and there are only a few known scandium independent minerals such as scandium yttrium, and the mineral source is very few, which is relatively rare in nature, and the domestic scandium resources are mainly associated with rare earth resources.

Da Mao and Eagle Sauce and Australia also have a lot of resources in this regard.

And the use of scandium resources is the earliest, the production of scandium alloy enterprises have two, whether in research, or in the production and application of materials are in a leading position, has developed 5 series of more than 40 grades of industrial scandium aluminum alloy.

Scandium is by far the most effective metamorphic agent for aluminum alloys, which can not only strongly refine the grain of aluminum alloys, increase the recrystallization temperature to improve the strength and toughness of aluminum alloys, but also significantly improve the weldability, heat resistance, corrosion resistance, thermal stability and resistance to neutron irradiation damage of aluminum alloys.

In the aerospace and aviation industry, the application of aluminum-scandium alloy is also the fastest, in this regard, Damao began to use this scandium aluminum alloy in the structural materials of aircraft very early, has been used in MiG-20, MiG-29, Tu-204 passenger aircraft and Yak-36 helicopters, etc., and also uses extruded special-shaped materials as the fuselage longitudinal beam material of Antonov transport aircraft, and uses scandium-containing aluminum alloy as the skin material of the fuselage and wings.

In addition, Da Mao also uses a large number of aluminum-scandium alloys in nuclear reactors, and also uses a lot in the shipbuilding industry and other fields.

Da Mao's application of scandium oxide reached its peak in the seventies and eighties of the last century, and even eagle sauce is willing to bow down.

The R&D center built by Huaxing Group in Damao has cooperated with the local material R&D center in aluminum-scandium alloy technology.

Because Huaxing Group is now using more and more fields in this material, Longyuan Rare Earth Technology Co., Ltd. naturally wants to increase the supply of this material in order to cooperate with the development strategy of the head office.

First, the price of scandium, the high price seriously restricts the breadth of its application, especially in the civil field with economy as the core basis, the application is more lagging behind. In addition, the large fluctuations in scandium prices have also affected the promotion of scandium applications.

Now the supply quantity and stability of scandium are very unsatisfactory, which seriously restricts the large-scale production of scandium products and the stable supply of output, and another is that the existing scandium extraction technology has the disadvantages of complex recovery process, high cost and low recovery rate, which is also the thing that Longyuan Rare Earth Technology Company and Zhongyuan Metallurgical Technology Company need to work together to carry out.