Cuprous oxide has wide application fields and huge industry development potential.

Cuprous oxide, also known as red copper oxide, is an oxide of monovalent copper with the chemical formula Cu2O. It appears as a red or dark red octahedral cubic crystalline powder. It is insoluble in water and alcohol and soluble in hydrochloric acid and chlorine. Ammonium and ammonia are slightly soluble in nitric acid, disproportionate into divalent copper and copper elements in acidic solutions, and gradually oxidize into black copper oxide in humid air.

There are various production methods for cuprous oxide. The common production methods mainly include the sintering method, which refers to the method of using copper powder as raw material, removing impurities, mixing with copper oxide, and high-temperature calcination to generate cuprous oxide; the glucose reduction method refers to using copper powder as the raw material to generate cuprous oxide. Copper sulfate and glucose are used as raw materials, and they are mixed and reacted with sodium hydroxide to generate cuprous oxide. The electrolysis method refers to using a cast copper plate as an anode in an electrolytic cell lined with polyvinyl chloride in an iron shell. The copper plate is used as the cathode, potassium chromate is used as the additive, and the salt solution is used as the electrolyte. Electrolysis is performed under specific conditions to generate cuprous oxide.

Cuprous oxide has a wide range of applications, including pigments, electronics, glass, chemicals, agriculture, ships, coatings, catalysts, metallurgy and other fields. Specifically, in the field of coatings, cuprous oxide can be used in the production of ship bottom antifouling coatings; in the agricultural field, cuprous oxide can be used in the production of crop fungicides and feed additives; in the field of glass, cuprous oxide can be used in glass dyes and ceramic colorant production scenarios; in the electronics field, cuprous oxide is a P-type semiconductor and can be used in the production scenarios of photoelectric conversion materials, lithium-ion battery anode materials, and rectifier materials.

According to the “China Cuprous Oxide Industry Market Monitoring and Future Development Prospects Research Report 2023-2027” released by the Industrial Research Center , cuprous oxide has unique properties and plays an important role in the fields of new materials, electronics industry, and chemical production. The market has huge development application prospects and development potential. The global cuprous oxide market size will exceed US$3 billion in 2022.

Global cuprous oxide manufacturers mainly include international companies such as American Chemet, American Dow, and Norwegian Laudox, as well as Taixing Smelter, Anhui Huayi Chemical, Linqu Century Metal Products, Jiangsu Tahoe Metal Industry, Tianjin Zhongzheng Huamei Technology, and Shanghai Chinese companies such as Xinbao Fine Chemicals, Wuhan Rongcan Biotechnology, and Beijing Tiandun New Material Technology.

Industry analysts said that cuprous oxide is an important inorganic chemical raw material with excellent performance and wide application fields. widely. In recent years, driven by the rapid development of downstream chemical industry, metallurgy, electronics and other fields, the demand for cuprous oxide has been increasing, and the industry has shown good development prospects. At present, there are a large number of cuprous oxide production enterprises in my country. However, due to technical limitations, local enterprises still have a certain gap compared with international leading enterprises in terms of product purity and technology. In the future, enterprises will still need to continue to improve their technical level.