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In July 2026, China's first fully continuous solvent-free polyether modified silicone oil production line with an annual capacity of 120,000 tons officially achieved full-load stable operation. This milestone marks that China has completely broken away from the high energy consumption and high emission bottlenecks of the traditional batch production process in this special functional additive sector, and the overall manufacturing level of the industry has jumped to the first echelon globally. According to the latest released industrial operation data, the domestic market size of polyether modified silicone oil exceeded 9.7 billion RMB in the first half of 2026, representing a 14.7% year-on-year growth compared with the same period in 2025, which is far higher than the global average growth rate of 6.2%. Among all product categories, the shipment volume of customized products targeting the three emerging tracks of new energy, personal care and ecological agriculture accounted for more than 60% for the first time, completely breaking the single demand structure that used to be centered on textile auxiliaries for decades. The entire industry is accelerating its transformation from "scale expansion" to "value upgrading".
Polyether modified silicone oil is a class of amphiphilic organosilicon functional materials obtained by grafting non-ionic polyether segments onto the molecular main chain of polydimethylsiloxane. Its molecular structure contains both hydrophobic siloxane segments and hydrophilic polyether epoxy segments, which not only retains the core properties of organosilicon materials such as low surface tension, wide temperature resistance range and low volatility, but also endows the product with excellent water-phase dispersion, surface wetting and compatibility performance through the introduction of polyether chains. Different from ordinary non-ionic hydrocarbon surfactants, the surface tension of polyether modified silicone oil can be as low as 20-22 mN/m, far below the level of about 30 mN/m of conventional carbon-based surfactants. This unique property enables it to rapidly spread and penetrate on various substrate surfaces at an extremely low addition concentration, making it an indispensable "industrial monosodium glutamate" in the modern industrial system. After nearly 30 years of technological iteration, the domestic industry has formed a full-coverage product matrix, ranging from general-purpose fully water-soluble polyether modified silicone oil to high-end segmented products such as fluorine-containing polyether modified silicone oil, high-activity polyether modified silicone oil, and polyether epoxy co-modified silicone oil. The core performance indicators of the entire product series have reached the international advanced level, fully meeting the differentiated needs of almost all downstream application scenarios.
The core driving force behind this round of industrial upgrading comes from the in-depth reconstruction of the industry-wide green manufacturing system under the "Dual Carbon" strategic framework. The traditional production of polyether modified silicone oil has long relied on batch reactor processes, which not only required a single-batch reaction cycle of more than 12 hours, but also consumed a large amount of organic solvents as reaction media. The subsequent solvent removal process was characterized by high energy consumption and large volatile emissions, and the residual trace solvents in the final product would directly affect the safety of downstream applications. To break through this common industry bottleneck, domestic industry-university-research teams have carried out 7 years of joint research and development, and independently developed a solvent-free synthesis technology system based on microchannel continuous flow reactions. By precisely regulating the coordination structure of platinum catalysts, the active life of the catalyst is extended to 15 times that of the traditional process, and the directional addition reaction between silicon-hydrogen bonds and polyether double bonds is realized, reducing the side reaction ratio from 8.7% in the traditional process to less than 0.3%. Through the modular design of continuous reaction devices, the single-batch reaction time is compressed from 12 hours to 180 seconds, the production energy consumption per unit product is directly reduced by 62%, and the volatile organic compound emissions during the production process are reduced by more than 95%. The supporting fully closed-loop product post-treatment system, which combines multi-stage molecular distillation and membrane separation technology, controls the volatile content of the product below 0.1% and increases the product purity to 99.95%, completely eliminating the long-standing industry pain points of residual small molecule impurities in traditional processes that cause odor and yellowing. At present, more than 40% of the domestic polyether modified silicone oil production capacity has completed green process transformation, the entire industry has built 17 national-level certified green factories, and the carbon emission per unit output value has decreased by 58% compared with 2020, leading the global green transformation process of organosilicon deep processing industries.
The explosive innovation of downstream application scenarios is opening up entirely new growth space for polyether modified silicone oil. In the new energy vehicle sector, polyether modified silicone oil, as the core wetting and leveling agent for water-based coating materials of power batteries, can make the water-based binder evenly spread on the surface of lithium iron phosphate cathode material particles in an extremely short time, greatly improving the coating uniformity and bonding strength of the electrode sheet. It can not only increase the cycle life of power batteries by 18%, but also completely replace the highly polluted hydrocarbon wetting auxiliaries used in the past, reducing the VOC emissions in the power battery electrode production process by more than 80%. According to industry calculations, the power battery segment of a single new energy vehicle consumes about 0.23 kg of high-end polyether modified silicone oil. With the continuous increase of global new energy vehicle penetration rate, this single track alone will create more than 300,000 tons of new market demand in the next 5 years. In the personal care sector, the new type of polyether modified silicone oil modified by bio-based polyether grafting is completely made of plant-derived glycerol-based polyether raw materials. Its carbon footprint is 72% lower than that of traditional petroleum-based products, and it has extremely low skin irritation and excellent emulsifying compatibility, which can stably encapsulate various functional active ingredients in additive-free formula systems. It has become the core raw material in the current "clean beauty" track, and the market growth rate of this category reached 37% in the first half of 2026, 2.5 times the average growth rate of the entire industry. In the ecological agriculture sector, agricultural organosilicon additives formulated with polyether modified silicone oil can increase the spreading area of pesticide droplets on the surface of plant leaves by more than 30 times, and extend the retention time of the liquid by 4 times. On the premise of ensuring the control effect of pests and diseases, it can directly reduce pesticide usage by 25%-40%, and greatly lower the risk of agricultural non-point source pollution. At present, this type of product has been popularized and applied on more than 200 million mu of cultivated land in China, becoming a key supporting material for the green transformation of agriculture.
At the same time, the standard system construction of the industry has also completed simultaneous upgrading. The latest released industry standard "Product Classification and Test Methods for Polyether Modified Silicone Oil" has established a full-dimensional indicator system covering molecular structure characterization, application performance evaluation and ecological safety testing for the first time, and clarified 29 subdivided technical requirements for different downstream scenarios, completely solving the long-standing industry pain points of chaotic product naming, falsely labeled performance indicators and non-uniform test methods. In terms of international trade, domestic polyether modified silicone oil is rapidly seizing global market share with its stable performance, customized rapid response capability and full-chain low-carbon advantages. In the first half of 2026, the export volume of domestic products increased by 41% year-on-year, and the products have been exported to 76 countries and regions around the world. The market share in Europe, Southeast Asia and other regions has increased by 27 percentage points compared with three years ago. Authoritative industrial research institutions predict that by 2031, the overall market size of domestic polyether modified silicone oil will exceed 29 billion RMB. Driven by emerging tracks such as new energy, ecological agriculture and green coatings, the entire industry will usher in a golden decade of high-quality development, and become a key functional material industry supporting the green transformation of global manufacturing.
