On January 8, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council held the National Science and Technology Award Conference 2015 in Beijing. Party and state leaders including Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Liu Yunshan, and Zhang Gaoli attended the conference and presented awards to representatives of winners of the State Natural Science Award, the State Technological Invention Award, National Science and Technology Progress Award and the International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Award of the People's Republic of China. Li Keqiang delivered a speech at the conference.

The “high-performance tungsten-based composite materials and their applications”, a technological achievement of Zhuzhou Cemented Carbide Group Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of China Minmetals Corporation, won the second-class honor of the State Technological Invention Award. It was commended by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council in the Great Hall of the People. Accomplished jointly by the team headed by Zhang Zhongjian of Zhuzhou Cemented Carbide Group Co., Ltd. and the technical team of Central South University, this achievement is internationally advanced.

The project of the “high-performance tungsten-based composite materials and their applications” has broken through the technical and theoretical bottlenecks of the conventional powder metallurgy method, solved the problems with conventional tungsten alloys (such as poor density, toughness, and homogeneity) and large-size tungsten materials (limited size and performance), researched and made tungsten materials with ultra high performance and ultra large sizes, and developed a series of high-performance tungsten-based composite materials. These materials have been widely applied in cutting-edge technology fields like aerospace, national defense, new energy, nuclear energy, microelectronics information engineering, and manufacturing of high-end steel wires and have broad application and development prospects and significant social and economic benefits.

This achievement also marks a major breakthrough of Minmetals in core and key technologies and common and basic technologies in the downstream materials of advantageous resources in China. Embracing China’s concept of innovation-driven development, it will provide technical support for the efforts of Minmetals in achieving its strategic objective of “promoting innovations in industrial upgrading”.