Compared with general glass, borosilicate glass has no toxic side effects. Its mechanical properties, thermal stability, water resistance, alkali resistance, acid resistance and other properties are greatly improved. It can be widely used in various fields such as chemical industry, aerospace, military, home, and hospital. It can be made into lamps, tableware, standard plates, telescope plates, washing machine observation holes, microwave oven plates, solar water heaters and other products. It has good promotion value and social benefits The emergence of this type of glass in our country is another new revolution in the basic materials industry.
In recent years, with the improvement of scientific and technological level and the rapid development of the pharmaceutical industry, many new products and technologies have emerged in the pharmaceutical packaging industry. Pharmaceutical glass is mainly used for the packaging of products such as injections, and its chemical stability directly affects the quality of drugs. Pharmaceutical glass is divided into high borosilicate glass, neutral borosilicate glass, low borosilicate glass, and soda-lime glass according to its chemical composition and product properties. Among them, neutral borosilicate glass has become the “new favorite” glass packaging material for injections due to its excellent properties.
Packaging products made of low borosilicate glass are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry. In addition, low borosilicate glass has a simpler production process, cheaper price and simpler technical requirements than medium borosilicate glass. Therefore, low borosilicate glass has developed more prominently and its application in the pharmaceutical industry occupies a dominant market.
Neutral borosilicate glass has obvious advantages over the glass materials commonly used by domestic injection companies: first, it has a small expansion coefficient, strong resistance to extreme cold and heat, and is more suitable for freeze-dried products: second, it is not easy to explode during processing, has high mechanical strength, and has strong impact resistance; third, it has good chemical stability, high acid, alkali and water resistance, and can ensure the expiration date of the drug In particular, the water injection preparation reduces and avoids the occurrence of white spots, tabletting and visible foreign matter.
Medium borosilicate glass is water-resistant and chemically stable. As a pharmaceutical packaging material, medium borosilicate glass has more advantages. The National Development and Reform Commission clearly listed first-class water-resistant borosilicate glass tubes as investment projects to encourage development in the recent edition of the "Guiding Catalogue for Industrial Structure Adjustment".
Internationally, drug injection packaging is entirely made of card bottles, Xilin bottles, ampoules and pre-filled bottles made of low-neutral borosilicate glass. Domestic products packaged in low- and neutral borosilicate glass are mainly high-end drugs such as packaged freeze-dried drugs, water-injectable drugs, and biological drugs, or drugs exported to developed countries. On the one hand, most of the neutral borosilicate glass tubes needed domestically rely on imports, with imports of about 3,000 tons per year. They are often subject to price monopolies and unstable supply periods by foreign companies. The annual imports of these tubes are more than 200 million cassettes, Xilin bottles, ampoules, test tubes, etc., which are used as raw materials, equivalent to the demand for 2,000 tons of glass tubes. On the other hand, In the National Industrial Restructuring Guidance Catalogue (2011), Class I water-resistant medium borosilicate medicinal glass tubes are listed as policy encouragement projects. Therefore, the development and application of neutral glass is a trend of drug production renewal, gradual gentrification and diversification, and is an inevitable choice to adapt to the increase in exported drugs.
