On September 2nd, in the laboratory of Qingdao Bangkai High-Tech Materials Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Bangkai Materials"), white crystals and small sand grains of various sizes and shapes were neatly displayed. Researchers were using specialized equipment to test the finished products for various indicators, including silicon content, water content, pore structure, and trace elements.

"A small grain of sand is primarily composed of silicon dioxide. Based on this, we have developed over 100 products based on a single matrix, serving thousands of companies in dozens of fields, including pharmaceutical purification and additives, the food industry, scientific research analysis, and smart displays." Yu Xiunuan, General Manager of Bangkai Materials, told reporters that the company has achieved breakthroughs in multiple technological fields, with many products replacing domestically produced products. It currently boasts one of the longest silicon-based material product lines and the broadest scope of applications in China. Furthermore, it is one of the few large-scale domestic manufacturers that produces silicon dioxide from source and meets both food and drug standards.

At the recently held 23rd World Pharmaceutical Ingredients China Exhibition, Bangkai Materials' gel-based silica product quality and professional service garnered high recognition and praise from visitors both domestically and internationally, leading to the signing of multiple partnership agreements.

How has a tiny grain of sand garnered international attention?

Breaking the import monopoly with a "grain of sand"

In analytical experiments, it serves as a consumable and tool; in pharmaceutical formulations, it serves as an adjuvant for APIs; in the petrochemical industry, it serves as a catalyst carrier; in the food industry, it not only effectively protects against moisture and caking, ensuring quality and taste, but also serves as a stabilizer for beer, ensuring long-term clarity and a refreshing taste... In a growing number of applications, silica, with its inherent purity and stability, offers new possibilities for new materials and processes.

"Our silica products offer unique advantages of high purity, high mechanical strength, and a controllable microporous structure," Yu Xiunuan explained to reporters at the company's product showroom. As one of the most common and versatile materials, silica is a key raw material in strategic industries such as biopharmaceuticals, the food industry, scientific research and analysis, and fine chemicals. Many products in these high-end sectors are currently heavily reliant on imports, making domestic substitution an urgent need.

For 17 years, Bangkai Materials has focused on the in-depth research and production of silica, a matrix material, from basic research to applied research and integrated development of the new materials industry. Adhering to a path of specialization, precision, and innovation, and benchmarking against internationally leading standards, Bangkai Materials has achieved numerous key technological breakthroughs through its unique high-purity silica production system.

Bangkai Materials' flagship product, specialized pure silica-based chromatographic fillers for smart displays, is a key material for the synthesis and purification of optoelectronic display terminals. For example, the purity of liquid crystals used in LCDs is extremely high. Excessive levels of metal ions and impurities in the liquid crystals can cause severe image retention, impacting the display's visual quality and lifespan. Silica-based chromatographic fillers, made from silica gel, are essential for purification.

For a long time, China has relied on imports for the chromatographic fillers used in the high-quality column chromatography purification and separation processes involved in single crystals, mixed crystals, and new display materials. Bangkai Materials has bravely broken through the technological barriers of foreign manufacturers and independently developed silica-based chromatographic packings specifically for display purification. This technology achieves simultaneous, targeted adsorption of a wide range of different metal impurities. Its performance in separation and purification rates, as well as the content of purified metal ion impurities, rivals or even surpasses the technical standards of similar international products while significantly reducing production costs. This project won the "2022 China New Display Industry Chain Contribution Award - Innovation Breakthrough Award." The chromatographic packing research results were evaluated as internationally advanced by the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center and listed on the National Science and Technology Achievements Network. Currently, related products have passed experimental verification at several leading domestic LCD manufacturers and are incorporated into their own production lines.

"Our silica-based chromatographic packings offer high mechanical strength, high stability, and easy surface modification. They offer advantages such as stable column beds, high column efficiency, and long service life. In downstream applications, they can significantly improve separation efficiency, increase sample loading capacity, and extend column life," Yu Xiunuan explained to reporters. Silica gel can be surface-bonded with various functional groups to create direct and reverse phase packings such as NH₂, CN, C18, and C8. Customized products and services are also available to meet diverse customer needs. Bangkai Materials' pharmaceutical-grade silica products strictly comply with the pharmacopoeia requirements, providing solid preparations with reliable all-round functional guarantees such as moisture-proof, anti-static, sustained-release, dispersion, and flow-aid.

"To be a hard technology company that breaks the import monopoly with innovation." Bangkai Materials continues to delve deeper into a matrix, achieving the "variability" of a grain of sand, ensuring the security of the supply chain and the continued competitiveness of products. It has more than 100 products in ten major product lines, including raw material lines, chromatography silica gel, food and drug lines, micro-powder silica gel, chromatography consumables, etc., and has achieved "filling in the gaps" in multiple industrial chains. It is in a leading position in China in terms of production capacity and customized production, and is committed to breaking the international monopoly and helping downstream companies achieve "domestic substitution."

"A grain of sand" achieves cost reduction and efficiency improvement

"The Bangkai Materials Production Base has achieved full independent control from source to market, and can meet production needs from grams to tons." Yu Xiunuan introduced that the company can expand the production process from 500 kg reaction equipment to various equipment with a daily production scale of 8 to 10 tons through self-developed processes, equipment, and systems. While maintaining product performance unchanged, the yield rate will be increased from the current domestic level of 60% to more than 92%.

Bangkai Materials adheres to the principle of "unified development and multi-track operation", maintains long-term and close collaborative innovation cooperation with upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, integrates raw material resources upward, develops customized application solutions downward, and carries out joint research and creation of domestic substitution with many leading companies in the industrial chain. It conducts targeted testing of the application characteristics of various materials in various fields, continuously optimizes production processes, control nodes and corresponding testing methods, and shortens the distance from basic research to industrial implementation to a small distance. It has fissioned more than 100 products, ranging from separation and purification media for raw materials to catalyst carrier materials, from chromatographic consumables for scientific research analysis and testing to auxiliary additives for the food industry, truly realizing the goal of "turning sand into gold".

"Companies replacing imported materials with domestically produced materials bring more than just cost reductions," Yu Xiunuan did some calculations. For example, for high-purity silica-based fillers used to be used in optoelectronics, the delivery cycle for imported products was previously three to six months. After domestic substitution, the lead time is now roughly one to two weeks, with pricing 50%-60% of the import price. Furthermore, through technology collaboration across the industry chain, technical teams will jointly develop customized products, significantly improving product yield and process continuity, accelerating product technical upgrades and iterations, and reducing innovation costs. If the penetration rate of domestically produced silica reaches 70%, the entire industry chain will see annual cost savings exceeding 10 billion yuan!

This shows that Bangkai Materials is promoting more than just domestic substitution for a single material; it is also reshaping the industry ecosystem. This not only accelerates the market validation of domestically produced materials but also lays a solid foundation for the development of cutting-edge and key technologies, helping the industry redefine Chinese standards for silica materials.

Take every particle of silica seriously

Yu Xiunuan has been working in the silica industry for nearly 20 years since graduating from university. In her words, she "dedicates herself to making every grain of silica and continuously expanding its application scenarios."

Silicon dioxide has experienced 70 years of development in China, leading the world in both production capacity and output. However, there is a significant disparity between export and import unit prices. While China has become a major silica producer, it has not become a strong silica producer. As silica's downstream applications continue to diversify, the demand for high-end silica product lines is becoming increasingly urgent in fields such as biopharmaceuticals, daily chemicals, petrochemicals, coatings, and electronic chemicals.

How has Bangkai Materials repeatedly achieved breakthroughs in the high-end materials industry?

"We've built a silica technology pyramid with 17 years of unwavering perseverance and determination, relying on persistent technological breakthroughs." Yu Xiunuan explained that the base of the pyramid is continuous research on basic materials and process equipment, the middle is a three-dimensional network of collaborative research between industry, academia, research, and application, and the top is a high-level R&D team that overcomes technical barriers.

Bangkai Materials never pursues short-term profits or imitation, but rather aims to build a fully localized and independent silica-based material R&D and production base. In addition to building its own R&D team, Bangkai Materials leverages the research strengths of universities such as Ocean University of China and Qingdao University of Science and Technology to establish expert workstations and a joint graduate training base. It regularly recruits international expert teams, as well as resident expert teams from universities and research institutes, and projects. This three-tiered R&D model is dedicated to the research and development of silica-based materials. The company has also established 1,500 square meters of industrial separation and purification process laboratories in Qingdao and Jining. The company actively recruits doctoral experts to advance the development and application of chromatographic materials and provides systematic professional services such as improving industrial purification efficiency and material surface modification.

"There are no shortcuts to technological breakthroughs. From breakthroughs in particle size uniformity to surface activity control, every 0.01% performance improvement is the result of hundreds of experimental data points and downstream validation, and the result of meticulous optimization of raw materials, processes, and systems." Tang Mengqi, R&D Manager of Bangkai Materials, stated that the company has grown from a small pilot to a large-scale industrial base, achieving technological breakthroughs across the entire supply chain, from high-end electronic materials to pharmaceutical and food-grade products, truly achieving "source control and precise benchmarking."

To date, Bangkai Materials holds 43 independent intellectual property rights, including 33 patents and 10 software copyrights. It is the first company in China to localize thin-layer chromatography reversed-phase plates, the first to master a coenzyme Q10 purification process that complies with the European Pharmacopoeia EP9.0, the only company in China capable of industrially producing functional silica gels, and the only company to independently develop high-end photoelectric chromatographic fillers that meet international quality standards. Thanks to its technological innovations in silica fillers, Bangkai Materials has been recognized as a National High-Tech Enterprise, a Shandong Province New Materials Leading Enterprise, one of Shandong Province's first digital economy "Morning Star Factories," and a Qingdao City "Specialized, Advanced, and Innovative" Enterprise.

Bangkai Materials is not only a guardian of both pharmaceutical and food standards, but also a practitioner of innovation and quality. Through specialized production, standardized management, compliant operations, and customized collaboration, it has demonstrated strong competitiveness in the silicon-based materials market both domestically and internationally.

In 2025, Bangkai Materials will continue to focus on products related to food additives and pharmaceutical excipients, continuously breaking through international technological barriers and contributing to the high-quality development of the industry.

From advanced technology to large-scale production, from domestic substitution to international leadership, when a grain of sand meets the original aspiration of daring to think and the dedication to continuous improvement, it reflects the spectrum of new-quality productivity leading the manufacturing industry in the new era. Bangkai Materials has always adhered to the business purpose of "Prosperity of the country, happiness of the people, Kaiser of the world", and has taken it as its mission to provide high-quality silica materials to global customers. It is committed to building a domestic benchmark enterprise for silicon-based materials and establishing an internationally competitive silicon matrix R&D base!