China accounts for 76% of global silicone monomer capacity, producing over one million tons of silicone oil annually. Yet industry reports reveal an awkward reality: in critical areas like electronic packaging, medical devices, and semiconductor manufacturing, high-end silicone oil still relies on imports for more than 70% of demand. Leading in volume, why is China still dependent on foreign suppliers for high-end products?
The bottleneck isn’t scale—it’s molecular-level precision. Experts highlight three key technical challenges for high-end silicone oil:
High-purity phenyl/ vinyl monomer synthesis – impurity control must reach ppm levels, but some domestic catalyst systems lack selectivity, producing excessive by-products.
Precision distillation and devolatilization – incomplete removal of cyclic oligomers (like D4/D5) can compromise the biocompatibility or electrical performance of medical or electronic-grade products.
Trace metal ion control – sodium, potassium, iron levels must be below 1 ppm to prevent electromigration in chip packaging, yet domestic equipment still struggles in high-vacuum, contact-free transport processes.
“It’s not that it can’t be made—it’s that we can’t guarantee batch-to-batch stability,” said an electronic materials procurement manager. “Foreign brands don’t just sell silicone oil—they sell reliability.”
Solutions are emerging. Some Chinese companies are moving from “usable” to “trusted”:
An East China company built a fully sealed high-purity silicone oil line, producing electronic-grade phenyl silicone oil with total metal ions <0.5 ppm, already used in domestic GPU underfill;
A South China manufacturer reduced D4 residues in medical-grade hydroxy silicone oil to below 10 ppm using self-developed molecular distillation, gaining CE certification and exporting to European catheter makers;
Industry leaders like Hoshine and Xin’an are moving upstream, producing high-purity phenyl chlorosilane monomers to ensure raw material consistency.
Policy support is also increasing. The “14th Five-Year Plan for Raw Materials Industry” explicitly promotes R&D in ultra-high-purity silicone materials, with multiple pilot platforms accelerating industry-academia collaboration.
Ultimately, the competition for high-end silicone oil is a contest of process control and quality culture. When Chinese factories can not only produce “one ton of silicone oil” but also reliably deliver “every gram meeting USP Class VI standards,” true import substitution will be achieved. This shift from quantity to quality may mark the final stretch for China’s silicone industry to move from “big” to “strong.”
