In the Jiuyuan Industrial Park in Baotou city – located in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region – a crystalline silicon industrial supply chain is on the rise.

Inner Mongolia Daqo New Energy Co is a resident upstream enterprise involved in the park's nascent supply chain. Its first phase of annual output of 100,000 metric tons of high-purity polysilicon and 1,000 tons of semiconductor polysilicon project was put into production in March.

The second phase, which will produce another 100,000 tons of high-purity polysilicon per year, began construction that same month.

Elsewhere, a new silicon carbide plant for Inner Mongolia Hanhai Semiconductor Co is now 95 percent complete and is expected to fully go into operation in October.

Zhao Haijun, deputy general manager of the company, said the project would fill a production gap in Northwest China and the plant would produce the most advanced third-generation semiconductor crystal materials in the country.

These will be widely used in civil 5G communications, new energy vehicles, rail transit, aerospace and in military applications.

The company has reportedly agreed to supply leading photovoltaic enterprises such as Inner Mongolia Tongwei High purity Silicon Co, Inner Mongolia Daqo New Energy Co and Shuangliang Silicon Materials (Baotou) Co. A follow-up venture involves the construction of a silicon carbide epitaxial slice production plant to further improve the silicon carbide industry supply chain.

To top it off, Inner Mongolia Zhongqing Smart Photovoltaic Technology Co began production on May 19 at the first phase of its 4-gigawatt photovoltaic module plant.