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Purity of China quartz deposit ‘highly similar’ to US Spruce Pine standard: study

Geologists identify Xiaohuaguo site in central Hubei, unlocking potential silica resources for solar panels and semiconductor production

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Chinese researchers detailing a new deposit say high-purity quartz is “an indispensable material in hi-tech fields such as semiconductors, fibre optic communications, new energy, and aerospace”. Photo: Shutterstock
Victoria Bela
Geologists say they have identified a new deposit in central China that can yield high-purity quartz comparable to the quality produced at a critical world-leading mine in the United States.

The quartz from the Chinese deposit is described as having “highly similar” properties to the resources produced at North Carolina’s Spruce Pine, which is crucial to the global production of solar panels and semiconductors.

In the US, there is a growing call from the industry to use high-purity quartz as a weapon against China’s rare earths export ban.

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Chinese researchers say the newly explored deposit near Shiyan in Hubei province is the latest in a string of quartz discoveries that could help the country cut its reliance on US imports.

“This discovery of the Xiaohuaguo high-purity quartz deposit provides a new prospective area for the exploration of hydrothermal vein-type high-purity quartz resources in China,” the team wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed Chinese-language journal Earth Science last month.

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