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In 2026, China’s organosilicon materials sector has achieved a milestone progress in the phenyl silicone oil subdivision track: the new-generation phenyl silicone oil products covering the full phenyl content spectrum of low, medium and high levels have realized full-process stable mass production. Their core performance indicators not only break the long-standing industry bottleneck that high refractive index and low viscosity cannot be balanced in the optoelectronics field, but also complete large-scale commercial application verification in the immersion liquid cooling scenarios of data centers. This breakthrough completely breaks the nearly 60-year technological monopoly of overseas enterprises in the field of high-end phenyl silicone oil, providing fully independent and controllable underlying material support for China’s strategic emerging industries such as Mini/Micro LED displays, advanced semiconductor packaging and AI computing power infrastructure. It marks that China’s organosilicon deep processing industry has officially entered the global first echelon.
In recent years, the simultaneous outbreak of the optoelectronic information industry and the AI computing power infrastructure industry has led to an unprecedented growth trend in the market demand for high-end phenyl silicone oil, and the supply gap continues to expand. According to public industry data, the global shipment volume of Mini/Micro LED display panels exceeded 230 million units in 2025, the market size of the advanced semiconductor packaging industry increased by 28% year-on-year, and the number of newly added immersion liquid cooling cabinets in global data centers increased by 170% year-on-year. The superposition of the two core application scenarios has driven the annual global market gap of high-end phenyl silicone oil to exceed 180,000 tons for the first time.
In the optoelectronics field, traditional phenyl silicone oil has long faced a performance trade-off dilemma: to obtain a higher refractive index, the phenyl content must be increased, but this will directly lead to a sharp rise in product viscosity, making it impossible to meet the processing requirements of advanced display and packaging materials. In the past, the refractive index of mainstream overseas products has long remained in the range of 1.51-1.53, while the viscosity is as high as thousands of mPa·s, which cannot adapt to the low-viscosity potting requirements of new-generation high-refractive-index optical lenses and LED encapsulant at all. With the continuous shrinking of Mini/Micro LED chip size, the requirements for light transmittance, refractive index matching and fluidity of materials in the packaging link have been greatly improved simultaneously. Traditional phenyl silicone oil can no longer support the yield improvement of new-generation display products. In the field of advanced semiconductor packaging, the popularization of 2.5D/3D Chiplet packaging technology requires filling materials to have extremely low impurity ion content, excellent thermal stability and extremely low stress coefficient. The ion residual level and thermal aging performance of traditional phenyl silicone oil cannot meet the strict standards of advanced processes.
In the field of AI computing power infrastructure, as the requirement for computing power density of AI large model training increases exponentially, the computing power density of a single cabinet has rapidly climbed from less than 10kW in the past to 30kW, 50kW or even higher. Traditional air cooling can no longer meet the heat dissipation requirements of high-density computing power, and immersion liquid cooling has become the next-generation heat dissipation technology route recognized by the industry. As the core heat exchange medium for immersion liquid cooling, phenyl silicone oil has long been dominated by high-cost imported fluorinated fluids, which not only leads to high procurement costs, but also faces potential supply chain interruption risks in some imported products, seriously restricting the large-scale low-cost deployment of domestic AI computing power infrastructure. In 2025, the newly installed volume of domestic immersion liquid cooling cabinets increased by 3 times year-on-year, and the market demand for domestic phenyl silicone oil immersion media with low cost, high safety and high heat exchange efficiency showed explosive growth. The supply capacity of high-end phenyl silicone oil has become one of the key factors affecting the development speed of China’s AI computing power industry.
The new-generation phenyl silicone oil that has achieved full-spectrum mass production this time relies on the core model-guided solvent-free synthesis technology made public in early 2026, which completely breaks the performance trade-off problem that has plagued the industry for decades, and realizes fully independent technological innovation in all links including molecular structure design, polymerization process control and post-processing refining.
In the molecular design link, the R&D team accurately regulates the polymerization ratio of two types of monomers, tetramethyltetraphenylcyclotetrasiloxane and octaphenylcyclotetrasiloxane, through computer simulation modeling, realizing the uniform distribution of phenyl groups on the molecular chain level, avoiding the problem of excessive intermolecular force and sharp viscosity rise caused by local enrichment of phenyl groups in traditional polymerization processes. By accurately controlling the dosage and reaction timing of the end-capping agent, the product molecular weight is stably controlled in the optimal range of 1600g·mol-1, finally realizing the historic compatibility of ultra-high refractive index of 1.562 and ultra-low viscosity of 250mPa·s. This performance combination has never achieved industrial mass production on a global scale before, directly expanding the application boundary of phenyl silicone oil in the optoelectronics field to a new height.
In the polymerization process link, the industry adopts the solvent-free bulk polymerization route for the first time, completely abandoning the organic solvents used in traditional processes, which not only completely eliminates the negative impact of solvent residue on product purity, but also greatly improves the atomic utilization rate of the reaction process. The discharge of three wastes per unit product is reduced by 78% compared with traditional processes, and the production energy consumption is reduced by 45%. In the process, tetramethylammonium hydroxide is used as the initiator, and the gradient temperature-accurate temperature control system realizes the uniform and controllable progress of the polymerization reaction, avoiding the problem of excessively wide molecular weight distribution caused by local explosive polymerization in traditional processes. The molecular weight distribution index of the product is stably controlled below 1.2, far better than the industry average level of 1.8. On this basis, by introducing phenyl functionalized monomers and new end-capping agents, and adding a small amount of DMF as a reaction promoter, the precise customization of the molecular structure of the product is further realized. Key parameters such as phenyl content, molecular weight and end-group activity can be flexibly adjusted according to the needs of different downstream scenarios, and customized grade products can be produced quickly.
In the post-processing refining link, the new multi-stage coupled devolatilization and deep purification process, without destroying the molecular structure of phenyl silicone oil, reduces the content of metal impurity ions in the product to below 30ppb, and the total volatile matter is controlled below 0.05%. The freezing point of low phenyl content grades is lower than -70℃, and the medium and high phenyl content grades have almost no change in physical properties after thousands of hours of aging at 250℃ in an air-free environment, and the thermal stability index reaches the global top level. The performance of the full series of products covers all demand ranges from low phenyl to high phenyl, which can meet the differentiated requirements of dozens of subdivision scenarios such as optoelectronics, semiconductors, immersion liquid cooling and special lubrication at the same time.
With the stable mass production of full-spectrum phenyl silicone oil, the new-generation products have quickly achieved large-scale commercial implementation in the two core tracks of optoelectronics and immersion liquid cooling, and are reconstructing the global cost competitiveness of the two 100-billion-level industries from the underlying material level.
In the optoelectronic information industry, high-refractive-index and low-viscosity phenyl silicone oil has been batch applied in the packaging link of new-generation Mini/Micro LEDs. With an ultra-high refractive index of 1.562, it achieves perfect refractive index matching with LED chips, greatly improving the light extraction efficiency of chips. The brightness of the packaged display device is increased by more than 18%, and at the same time, the low viscosity characteristic greatly improves the pouring fluidity of the packaging adhesive, the packaging yield is increased to 99.5%, and the production efficiency is increased by 30%. In the field of advanced semiconductor packaging, the chip filling and protection material prepared from ultra-high-purity phenyl silicone oil has almost no performance attenuation after 2000 hours of high-temperature aging test, fully meeting the strict requirements of 2.5D/3D Chiplet packaging. The material cost is reduced by 40% compared with the imported products used before, directly helping the advanced packaging industry further reduce manufacturing costs. In the field of high-end optical lenses, the optical lenses prepared from the new-generation phenyl silicone oil have a light transmittance of more than 99%, and the refractive index uniformity deviation is less than 0.0002. They have been batch applied in the optical modules of AR/VR devices, greatly improving the imaging clarity of AR devices.
In the AI computing power immersion liquid cooling track, the modified phenyl silicone oil products specially developed for immersion liquid cooling scenarios have successfully realized large-scale substitution of imported fluorinated fluids with excellent insulation performance, heat exchange performance and chemical stability. The cost of this product is only about 1/3 of that of imported fluorinated fluids, and the gross profit margin remains above 50%. The medium filling volume of a single immersion liquid cooling cabinet is about 1.2 tons, and the product unit price is stable in the range of 90-110 yuan/kg. On the premise of ensuring insulation safety, the heat exchange efficiency is 25% higher than that of traditional coolants, which can support the long-term stable operation of ultra-high-density computing power of more than 50kW per cabinet. At present, this product has completed large-scale deployment and verification in many large domestic AI computing power data centers. The PUE value of the data center is reduced to below 1.07, and the computing power heat dissipation energy consumption is reduced by 40%, which directly reduces the deployment cost of high-density AI computing power by more than 30%, providing high-cost-performance material support for the large-scale AI large model industry’s computing power infrastructure construction.
In addition, the new-generation phenyl silicone oil has realized import substitution in other high-end subdivision scenarios such as special aerospace lubrication, high-end instrument and meter damping oil, and new energy vehicle high-temperature wire harness insulation, completely solving a number of long-standing "stuck neck" material problems that have plagued the high-end manufacturing industry.
According to the public capacity planning information in the industry, China’s first 5,000-ton/year specialized new-generation phenyl silicone oil production line will be officially put into operation in the third quarter of 2026. With the successive commissioning of the second and third phases of production capacity in the follow-up, it is expected that the total domestic high-end phenyl silicone oil production capacity will exceed 30,000 tons by 2028, which can not only fully meet all the domestic demand of the optoelectronics and immersion liquid cooling industries, but also be exported in large quantities to major global manufacturing regions, completely changing the industrial pattern in which the global high-end phenyl silicone oil supply was highly concentrated in the past.
For decades, the technological iteration of global high-end phenyl silicone oil has been completely dominated by a small number of overseas enterprises, with slow product renewal speed and long-term high prices, which has seriously restricted the development speed of downstream emerging industries. Relying on the flexible customized production capacity of domestic new-generation phenyl silicone oil, the domestic industry has built a new collaborative model of "rapid response to downstream demand - rapid molecular structure iteration - large-scale stable production". The product iteration cycle has been shortened from the traditional 5-8 years to less than 12 months, which can quickly adapt to the rapid technological iteration needs of emerging industries such as optoelectronics and AI computing power. With the large-scale promotion and application of full-spectrum phenyl silicone oil, it will further drive the cluster development of the entire industrial chain including downstream encapsulants, optical materials and liquid cooling systems, and build a completely independent and controllable high-end phenyl silicone oil industrial ecology in China.
Under the general trend of global digital economy and green low-carbon transformation, the technological breakthrough and capacity release of China’s phenyl silicone oil industry will not only promote China’s transformation from a major organosilicon producer to a strong high-end organosilicon industry power, but also provide high-cost-performance and high-supply-stability core material support for the sustainable development of the global display industry and AI computing power industry. In the competition of the global high-end new material industry, it will build a brand-new industrial development pattern led by China.
