Diamond cutting line referred to as diamond wire, first used for sapphire cutting, and then gradually used in the field of photovoltaics, its cutting performance directly affects the quality of silicon wafers and photovoltaic modules photoelectric conversion performance. At present, the demand for silicon wafer cutting diamond wire accounts for more than 90% of the total demand, and its downstream is mainly in the photovoltaic industry.

　Influenced by the strong installed demand of the PV industry at home and abroad since 2022, as well as the fundamental factors such as the significant growth in demand for silicon wafer cutting, a high-strength cutting wire – tungsten wire, which is superior to traditional diamond wire, has seen exponential growth in market demand.

　　According to PV industry association data, the global PV new installed market capacity in 2021 is 170GW, up 31% year-on-year, and China’s silicon wafer production is 227GW, up 40.7% year-on-year. As silicon wafer is the highest industrial concentration in the global PV industry chain, production capacity is mainly concentrated in China, with China’s silicon wafer production accounting for 96% of global silicon wafer production in 2020.

　　China Energy News data show that the production of 1GW of silicon wafers in 2021 requires 375,000 kilometers of diamond wire, while the single GW line consumption and with the trend of fine line, thin wafer increasing. Currently the market commonly used 38μ cut 165μm or 160μm thickness of silicon wafers, the average of about 4 meters of single wafer line consumption, single GW consumption line has reached 500 ~ 520,000 km.

　　Since 2021, PV silicon prices have risen sharply, and downstream wafer factories are gradually switching to finer wire diameter diamond wire to reduce silicon loss during cutting.

Fine wire is an inevitable trend in the development of the diamond wire industry.

Tungsten wire busbar breaks the wire diameter bottleneck and has excellent performance, and will become the next generation of diamond wire busbar material. Tungsten wire has natural advantages in terms of strength. Currently, domestic mass-produced tungsten wire for PV cutting is already below 35μm, and is gradually being developed to 30μm. The space for tungsten wire thinning and cost reduction is significantly higher than that of high carbon steel wire, and the PV industry is opening up the space for further cost reduction.

　　Benefit from the new application of tungsten wire in photovoltaic field, domestic tungsten wire production and sales volume increased significantly. 2022 1-4 years, domestic tungsten wire apparent consumption increased by 57.74%, 153.72%, 37.48%, 41.29% year-on-year, respectively, and the tungsten wire enterprise start-up rate increased from 60% at the beginning of the year to 89%.

　　The penetration rate of tungsten fund steel wire is expected to reach 15% in 2022 and increase to 70% in 2025. Assuming the capacity expansion, the tungsten wire market space in PV will be about 9.6 billion yuan in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 126%.

　　According to China Merchants Securities, the fundamentals of the tungsten wire industry have fundamentally changed, with the dominant demand switching from the low value-added, gradually shrinking demand for light bulbs to the high-growth, high-boom photovoltaic sector.

Tungsten wire in the photovoltaic field added tens of billions of space, demand growth of four years ten times. The end of this year, tungsten wire diamond wire is expected to show the first cost-effective, diamond wire into the product upgrade and demand for high-speed growth of the golden development period, causing changes in the bus bar upstream tungsten wire companies benefit.

　　Tungsten wire replacement diamond wire can be analogous to high-efficiency battery technology to replace PERC cells, the long-term trend direction is clear, the main game of short-term cost, premium and comprehensive cost performance. In the short term, the replacement progress of tungsten wire is affected by the price of silicon wafer, the cost of carbon steel wire and the cost of tungsten wire itself, which may show the advantage of cost performance at the end of this year.

Our company specializes in the production of fine tungsten wire cutting wire with diameters from 20μm to 50μm for more than 20 years, of which 30μm and 35μm can be used as the diamond wire bus for cutting silicon wafers. In addition, our professional production drawing equipment and our own production of powder ensure the quality of tungsten cutting wire. After the production is finished, there is a strict quality inspection department to ensure the long work life of tungsten cutting wire in cutting silicon wafers.