Materials Business

Material Products

Battery materials

The tide in the automobile industry is currently turning towards electrification with hybrid and electric vehicles, and cathode material (the material that the positive electrode in a battery is made from) is one of the battery materials that facilitates this electrification.
Sumitomo Metal Mining mainly produces battery cathode material for vehicles, with its technical capabilities and quality control system that enable stable quality mass production of cathode material which has a high nickel content and often tends to be unstable.

Crystal materials

Crystal materials produced by the Sumitomo Metal Mining Group include lithium tantalate (LT) and lithium niobate (LN) that are used in filters for communication devices such as smartphones to prevent noise and interference as well as optical isolators and faraday rotators that support fiber optic environments, and these materials are being increasingly utilized to fulfill essential roles in a society witnessing a massive growth in the volume of communication and rapid digitalization.

Powder materials

Thanks to their originality, the Sumitomo Metal Mining Group’s powder materials continue to grow in terms of application and potential. These materials include our own original CWO® and other near infrared ray absorbing materials, thick film pastes that are used as electrodes in compact electronic components, resistor elements, and insulators and can be provided to fit the intended use, and fine grain metallic powder products produced from our outstanding powder synthesis technology based on wet synthesis.

X-MINING

A Website for offering information on powder material products X-MINING (cross-mining)

Package materials

The Sumitomo Metal Mining Group offers package material such as copper-clad polyimide films and printed wiring boards. The copper-clad polyimide films, S’PERFLEX, incorporate refined high-level metallizing technology and achieve the high-quality characteristics demanded of COF for LCD panels. The printed wiring boards achieve high-quality at a low cost with their foundation of a long track record in circuit boards for vehicles, and a policy of integrated in-process production system.

Silicon Carbide (SiC) Substrates

Silicon -Carbide (SiC) is a semiconductor material that is used in power semiconductors that control electric power. The market for SiC, as an excellent material that can reduce energy loss, is expected to expand, particularly for high-capacity types (large current, high withstand voltage), which are necessary for drive controllers in electric and hybrid vehicles.
Our direct bonded SiC substrate, SiCkrest®, is able to realize a low resistance and a high strength throughout the entire substrate while maintaining the characteristics of a monocrystalline SiC. This is accomplished through bonding a low-resistance polycrystalline SiC support substrate with a thin, high-quality monocrystal. Furthermore, SiC monocrystal require a lot of energy to produce, but our technology can increase the supply to the market while reducing overall energy consumption by repeatedly using this rare monocrystal. This feature has attracted a lot of attention from the market.

  • SiCkrest® is our registered trademark in Japan and certain other countries and regions.

Catalyst Business

Catalysts perform an important role in chemical processes for products by acting as a promoter that brings about a variety of chemical reactions. In the Sumitomo Metal Mining Group, N.E. Chemcat Corporation manufactures automobile exhaust gas purification catalysts and chemical catalysts, while Nippon Ketjen Co., Ltd. manufactures hydrotreating catalysts that are used in the desulfurization process in oil refining.