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In July 2026, a milestone progress was achieved in China's special organofluorosilicone materials sector: the perfluoroalkyl modified fluorosilicone oil developed for extreme working condition lubrication, fluorine-based surface treatment and new energy anti-corrosion scenarios has successfully completed the full-cycle continuous stable operation verification on the 10,000-ton mass production line. All core performance indicators of the product have fully met and partially exceeded the benchmark level of leading international enterprises, completely ending the nearly 30-year technological monopoly of overseas manufacturers in the field of high-end fluorosilicone oil. This breakthrough not only fills the industrial gap of domestic high-purity fluorine-containing functional fluids, but also directly provides fully independent and controllable core lubrication and protection material support for China's key equipment fields such as aerospace, high-end CNC machine tools and offshore wind power energy storage. It marks that China's organofluorosilicone industry has officially moved from catching up in basic categories to a new development stage of leading the global high-end market.
Fluorosilicone oil is a modified functional fluid with perfluoroalkyl structural units introduced into the side groups on the main chain of polysiloxane. It integrates the wide temperature range stability and low surface tension characteristics of organosilicon materials, as well as the unique advantages of fluorine materials such as strong corrosion resistance, extremely low friction coefficient and water-oil repellency. It is one of the few core functional materials in the current industrial field that can simultaneously adapt to multiple extreme working conditions including the ultra-wide temperature range from -60°C to 300°C, strong acid and alkali corrosion, and high load wear. Different from the inert molecular structure of ordinary methyl silicone oil, the perfluoroalkyl groups on the molecular chain of fluorosilicone oil will form a dense fluorine element enrichment layer on the material surface, reducing the surface energy of the material to below 10mN/m, and endowing it with chemical stability that is hardly dissolved by conventional solvents. This is a performance boundary that ordinary organosilicon materials cannot achieve at all. For a long time in the past, the domestically mass-produced fluorosilicone oil in China was mostly concentrated in mid-to-low-end categories with low fluorine content, which could only meet basic scenario requirements such as ordinary textile water-repellent finishing and low-end release agents. High-purity perfluoroalkyl fluorosilicone oil with fluorine content higher than 60% has long faced common industry problems such as insufficient perfluoroalkyl grafting rate, uneven molecular chain distribution and inadequate control of trace active impurities. Downstream applications in extreme high-end working conditions almost 100% relied on expensive imported products, which not only kept procurement costs high, but also resulted in a supply chain delivery cycle of more than 6 months, posing major hidden dangers to the material safety of key equipment.
The industrialization breakthrough completed by domestic technical teams this time has corely overcome three long-term "bottleneck" technical difficulties that restrict the development of the industry. First, the high-selectivity synthesis technology of perfluoroalkylsilane monomers has realized full-process industrialization. The team abandoned the old high-pollution and high-energy-consumption process of traditional electrochemical fluorination, and innovatively adopted a brand-new route of fluorine gas gas-phase gradient fluorination coupled with distillation purification. By introducing a dynamic inert gas dilution and temperature control unit into the reaction system, the by-product generation rate of the fluorination reaction is controlled below 3%, and the purity of the final perfluoroalkylsilane monomer stably reaches 99.95%, completely eliminating the common chlorine-containing impurity residue problem in traditional processes, and providing a high-purity raw material foundation for the subsequent polymerization reaction of fluorosilicone oil. Second, the precise molecular regulation technology in the fluorosilicone copolymerization process has realized large-scale application. The team innovatively developed a special anionic living polymerization process for the fluorosilicone system. By introducing an in-situ fluorine element labeling and monitoring system during the reaction process, the uniform random distribution of perfluoroalkyl groups on the main chain of polysiloxane is achieved, completely avoiding the common local agglomeration phenomenon of fluorine groups in traditional processes. The final high fluorine content fluorosilicone oil product can stably cover an ultra-wide range of fluorine mass fraction from 60% to 85%, and the kinematic viscosity error between different batches is controlled within ±2%, far better than the industry benchmark level of ±7% for similar overseas products. Third, the extreme purification system with low volatile content has been fully established. Aiming at the low precipitation requirement of high-end lubrication scenarios, the team built a purification system combining multi-stage molecular distillation and supercritical fluorocarbon solvent extraction, controlling the residual amount of low-molecular fluorosilicone rings in the product below 50ppm, and the volatile content is only 0.12% after constant temperature baking at 200°C for 24 hours, fully meeting the non-volatilization requirement of aerospace equipment for lubricating materials.
At present, this domestically produced high-purity fluorosilicone oil has completed long-term large-scale application verification in multiple domestic core high-end equipment fields. In the aerospace field, the new-generation aero-engine bearing grease prepared with this fluorosilicone oil maintains a stable lubrication state in the ultra-wide temperature range from -55°C to 280°C. The limit PV value of the bearing reaches 120MPa·m/s, and the performance retention rate of the grease still exceeds 93% after 1000 hours of continuous operation under high load and high speed conditions. It has been successfully applied to the main shaft lubrication system of the new-generation high-thrust aero-engine, completely replacing similar products that have long relied on imports. In the field of high-end CNC machine tools, the high-precision guide rail lubrication medium using this fluorosilicone oil as the core base oil has a friction coefficient as low as 0.03, which improves the motion positioning accuracy of the guide rail by 40%, and does not need to replace the lubrication medium after 3 years of continuous operation, fully adapting to the nano-level machining accuracy requirements of five-axis linkage machine tools, breaking the supporting monopoly of overseas high-end machine tool manufacturers on core lubrication materials. In the field of offshore wind power energy storage, the anti-corrosion coating for fan blades modified with this fluorosilicone oil still maintains 0-level adhesion after 15 years of continuous operation in the marine environment with high salt spray and strong ultraviolet rays. The water and oil repellency of the surface hardly attenuates, extending the operation and maintenance cycle of fan blades from the traditional 2 years to 8 years, greatly reducing the full life cycle operation and maintenance cost of offshore wind power. In the field of semiconductor manufacturing, this fluorosilicone oil is used as the sealing lubricant for the vacuum system of dry etching machines. Under the long-term erosion environment of strong fluorine plasma, it does not undergo any decomposition reaction, and no small molecules volatilize and precipitate, ensuring the stability of ultra-high vacuum in the etching chamber. It has been batch applied to advanced etching equipment production lines with 14nm and below process nodes.
The latest market data released by industry research institutions shows that in the first half of 2026, the market demand for domestic high-end fluorosilicone oil increased by 197% year-on-year compared with the same period in 2025. The market pattern where 100% of special fluorosilicone oil with high fluorine content relied on imports before has rapidly transformed, with domestically produced materials occupying 45% of the market share following this domestic technological breakthrough. The procurement cost for downstream core users has directly decreased by 62%, and the supply chain delivery cycle has been shortened from the original 6 months to less than 15 days. With the subsequent commissioning of multiple 10,000-ton production lines, it is expected that the market penetration rate of domestically produced high-end fluorosilicone oil will exceed 90% by 2028. It will not only fully meet the demand of the domestic downstream high-end equipment industry, but also greatly enhance the core competitiveness of China's fluorosilicone industry in the global high-end functional material market. Experts from industry associations estimate that the full localization of this material will directly drive the entire industrial chain with a scale of nearly 100 billion yuan, including downstream aerospace lubrication, high-end machine tool supporting and offshore wind power anti-corrosion, to achieve independent and controllable development, injecting key material impetus into the upgrading and development of China's high-end equipment manufacturing industry.
