Scandium oxide has broad application prospects

Scandium oxide has the chemical formula Sc2O3, a white solid that is soluble in water and in hot acid. Due to the difficulty in directly extracting scandium products from scandium containing minerals, scandium oxide is currently mainly recovered and extracted from by-products of processing scandium containing minerals such as waste residue, wastewater, smoke, and red mud.

Strategic products

Scandium is an important strategic product. Previously, the US Department of the Interior released a Final List of 35 strategic minerals (Critical Minerals 2018) that are considered critical to the US economy and national security. Almost all economic minerals are included, such as aluminum used in industry, platinum group metals used in catalyst manufacturing, rare earth elements used in electronic products, tin and titanium used in alloy manufacturing, etc.

The application of scandium oxide

Scandium, a single element, is generally used in alloys, and scandium oxide also plays an important role in ceramic materials in a similar way. The tetragonal zirconia ceramic material, which can be used as an electrode material for solid oxide fuel cells, has a special property where the conductivity of this electrolyte increases with temperature and the concentration of oxygen in the environment. However, the crystal structure of this ceramic material itself cannot exist stably and does not have industrial value; It is necessary to add some substances that can fix this structure in order to maintain its original properties. Adding 6-10% scandium oxide is like a concrete structure, allowing scandium oxide to stabilize on a square lattice.

Scandium oxide can also serve as a densifier and stabilizer for high-strength and high-temperature resistant engineering ceramic material silicon nitride. It is possible to generate a refractory phase Sc2Si2O7 at the edges of small particles, thereby reducing the high-temperature deformation of engineering ceramics. Compared with adding other oxides, it can better improve the high-temperature mechanical properties of silicon nitride. Adding a small amount of Sc2O3 to UO2 in high-temperature reactor nuclear fuel can avoid lattice transformation, volume increase, and cracking caused by the conversion of UO2 to U3O8.

Scandium oxide can be used as a vapor deposition material for semiconductor coatings. Scandium oxide can also be used to produce solid-state lasers with variable wavelengths, high-definition television electron guns, metal halide lamps, and so on.

Industry Analysis

In recent years, scandium oxide has received increasing attention in the fields of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and scandium sodium halide lamps in China. SOFCs have advantages such as high power generation efficiency, high cogeneration efficiency, water resource conservation, green environmental protection, easy modular assembly, and wide range of fuel selection. They have great application value in distributed power generation, automotive power batteries, energy storage batteries, and other fields.