As an important part of the country's strategic emerging industries, the silicone industry has great development potential. However, the current application scope of silicone materials is relatively limited. Industry experts pointed out that silicone materials should seek wider applications through scientific and technological innovation, realize the technological upgrading of the traditional silicone industry, the performance iteration of silicone materials required by emerging industries, and promote the silicone industry to a "new" breakthrough.


Organic silicon ensures the safe operation of batteries
With the transformation of the global energy structure and the rapid development of new energy technologies, the demand for efficient energy storage devices is growing.
Fei Huafeng, a researcher at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out that compared with the liquid electrolytes used in traditional lithium-ion batteries, solid electrolytes have higher energy density and better safety. As a polymer electrolyte material, polysiloxane has the advantages of high thermal stability, high chemical stability, wide temperature range flexibility, and non-toxicity. It has great application potential in energy storage devices and is expected to be used in integrated module material matrices and even for regulating nano-micro interface properties.
"At present, polysiloxane-based solid electrolytes still need to overcome the problems of low room temperature ionic conductivity, uncontrolled interfacial reactions, and low mechanical strength." Fei Huafeng said that they used polysiloxane as the raw material, introduced polar side chains through polysiloxane main chain structure design, side chain modification and topological network regulation, regulated the solubility of polysiloxane matrix to lithium salts, solved the problem of its low conductivity, and increased the lithium ion migration number of the electrolyte, achieving flame retardant performance and improving battery safety.
The application of high thermal conductivity materials in lithium-ion batteries is crucial to improving battery safety and extending life. The use of flame-retardant thermal conductive materials to encapsulate battery cells can effectively control battery temperature, improve heat dissipation efficiency, and ensure safe operation. Zheng Miaosheng, general manager of Kaibo New Materials (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., emphasized that thermal conductive silicone gel, as a silicone material with thermal conductivity, has good hydrophobicity, excellent weather resistance, aging resistance and other properties, and is widely used in new energy, automobiles, electronic equipment and other fields. As electronic equipment develops towards higher power and smaller size, the demand for thermal conductive silicone gel will continue to increase in the future.


Silicone rubber achieves self-repair and regeneration
Silicone rubber materials are often found in the external insulation materials wrapped around the lines and power station equipment. Li Xiyu, director of the Xi'an High Voltage Electric Appliance Research Institute, pointed out that silicone rubber, as the external insulation material of field equipment, plays an important role in solving the AC and DC pollution problems. With the continuous increase in usage and service life, how to achieve high-value utilization of silicone rubber materials is an issue that the industry urgently needs to study.
Professor Xiang Hongping of Guangdong University of Technology also pointed out that silicone rubber has problems such as cracks during use and difficulty in recycling after being discarded. Although a variety of self-repairable and recyclable silicone rubbers have been developed, the products still generally have problems such as low mechanical strength. In this regard, Xiang Hongping's team proposed to use an "asymmetric" dynamic cross-linking strategy to prepare high-strength, self-healing, and renewable silicone rubber. The side chain amino silicone oil (PDMS-NH2) was synthesized by the catalytic equilibrium method. PDMS-NH2 was mixed with p-carboxylbenzaldehyde, and the aldehyde group and carboxyl group reacted with the amino group to construct a double dynamic cross-linking bond (imide bond and ionic hydrogen bond). The silicone rubber achieved reversible fracture and recombination reactions under thermal induction with the help of imide bond and ionic hydrogen bond, and the silicone rubber was self-repaired and recycled.
"Due to the low bond energy of ionic hydrogen bond, when silicone rubber is deformed by force, it will break before the covalent bond of the polysiloxane main chain is broken, which plays a role in dissipating energy, and the ionic hydrogen bond will be reconstructed and continuously broken during the stress process, which plays a role in toughening. This self-repair and recycling mechanism can be repeated many times, which can extend the service life of the material." Xiang Hongping said.


Developing new silicones in multiple places
my country is the world's largest producer of silicones and occupies an important position in global silicone consumption, but compared with developed countries, my country's per capita silicone consumption still lags behind.
"The development of new organosilicon materials can expand the application range of organosilicon materials and promote the development of organosilicon materials from 'industrial MSG' to bulk products. However, there are currently few methods for synthesizing organosilicon, resulting in fewer types of organosilicon." Wang Dengxu, a professor at Shandong University, introduced that they used new organosilicon synthesis methods such as Heck reaction and multi-component reaction to construct a variety of new organosilicon materials such as organosilicon porous (fluorescent) materials and amphiphilic organosilicon polymers, which is expected to achieve an effective fusion of organosilicon materials and carbon-based materials.