China has classified high-purity quartz as a new mineral species, with its emergence expected to reduce the country's high dependence on imports and support the high-quality development of the semiconductor and solar industries.

High-purity quartz has become China's 174th mineral species, the Ministry of Natural Resources announced yesterday. Discovered by the Zhengzhou Institute of Multipurpose Utilization of Mineral Resources, high-purity quartz can be mined in areas such as East Qinling in Henan province and Altay in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

High-purity quartz refers to rocks from which can be extracted silicon dioxide with a purity of no less than 99.995 percent. It is an essential raw material for strategic emerging industries, such as semiconductor and photovoltaic. High-purity quartz sand is the main raw material to make quartz crucibles, tools used to make solar silicon wafers.

The high-purity quartz sand China uses to make quartz crucibles is mainly imported, Zheng Tianhong, a PV industry analyst at the Shanghai Metals Market, told Yicai. The classification of high-purity quartz marks the successful result of China's efforts to find domestic mineral resource alternatives, he added.

"Some Chinese quartz crucible manufacturing firms have already been trialing the use of domestic high-purity quartz sand, and the resulting products have reached the expected service life," Zheng noted.