With the development of the national economy, the development and application fields of fine chemicals will continue to expand, and new categories will continue to increase. The term fine chemicals has been used for a long time, originally referring to chemical products with small output, high purity and high price, such as medicine, dyes, coatings, etc. However, this meaning has not fully revealed the essence of fine chemicals. Experts from various countries have some new views on the definition of fine chemicals. Some European and American countries call chemical substances with small production and produced and sold according to different chemical structures as fine chemicals; The products with small output, processing and preparation, special function or final use performance are called special chemicals. China and Japan collectively refer to these two types of products as fine chemicals.
The range of fine chemical products being loaded is very wide. There are different views on how to classify fine chemical products at home and abroad. It is usually classified according to the structure. Because products with the same structure can have completely different functions and different application objects, it is inconvenient to apply them according to the structure. There are also four categories of fine inorganic chemical products, fine organic chemical products, fine polymer chemical products and fine biological chemical products according to their properties. This classification method is rough. The more unified classification principle at home and abroad is to classify products according to their functions. According to the Japanese Fine Chemicals Yearbook, fine chemicals were divided into 35 categories in 1985 and expanded to 36 categories in 1990. They are: medicine, pesticides, synthetic dyes, organic pigments, coatings, adhesives, spices, cosmetics, surfactants, soaps, detergents, printing inks, organic rubber additives, photographic materials, catalysts, reagents, polymer flocculants, petroleum additives, food additives, veterinary drugs, feed additives, paper and pulp chemicals, plastic additives Metal surface treatment agent, aromatic deodorant, automotive chemicals, sterilization and mildew inhibitor, fatty acid, rare earth chemicals, precision ceramics, functional polymers, biochemical products, enzymes, plasticizers, stabilizers, concrete admixtures, health food, organic electronic materials, etc.