The R&D index in the new material field in 2022 (January to November 2022) fluctuates between 110.1 and 145.5, with an average value of about 123.8, which means that the scale of R&D activities has increased by 23.8% year-on-year, which is 8.3 percentage points higher than the growth rate of the entire industry.
An important aspect of measuring R&D output is invention patents. In the past 12 months (Dec. The industry-wide growth rate is about 6 percentage points; the number of invention patent granteds reached 90,458, a year-on-year growth rate of 16.1%, which is about 2 percentage points higher than the industry-wide growth rate. The number of invention patent granteds has increased year by year since 2018.
Behind the continuous growth of research and development in the field of new materials is the rapid expansion of the scale of the new materials industry. In September 2022, Xing Tao, deputy director of the Raw Materials Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, publicly stated that my country's new material industry has made great progress in innovation capabilities, industrial scale, and agglomeration effects.
Since 2012, the compound annual growth rate of the total output value of the new material industry has exceeded 20%, accounting for 15% of the raw material industry, forming a material industry system with the most complete categories and the largest scale in the world; at the same time, the strength of the enterprise has also continued to grow , cultivated and formed 196 individual champion enterprises featuring materials, 998 specialized and special new "little giant" enterprises, and formed new material industry clusters represented by the Bohai Rim, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions, and cultivated There are 4 advanced manufacturing clusters, 14 strategic emerging industrial clusters, 19 innovative industrial clusters, and 96 demonstration bases for new industrialized industries.
From the perspective of technology research and development, the most popular technical topics in the field of new materials in the past year include electrode materials, alloy materials, synthetic resins, ceramic materials, polymer compounds, etc. The fastest-growing technical topic in the field of new materials, its annual invention patent applications increased by 50%, 40%, and 32% respectively compared with the previous year.
At present, a batch of new materials independently developed by our country has effectively guaranteed major projects of major equipment such as aerospace and information communication. For example, the main structural parts of composite materials are applied to the core cabin of the "Tianhe" space station; aluminum alloy thick plates are applied to the domestic C919 large aircraft; breakthroughs have been made in ultra-pure and ultra-uniform integrated circuit materials; 0.015mm "hand-sheared steel" has achieved the world's first wait.