Advanced Ceramics

Introduction

Have you ever wondered about the myriad materials from which stuff is made that we come across in our daily life? The numerous materials which have unique characteristics and which are used for making various articles used in everyday life- these materials attract the attention of the young inquisitive minds in engineering classrooms all over the world.

Today, let me introduce you to the world of "CERAMICS".

"Ceramics" are the materials which are often misunderstood as materials used merely for pottery and decorative objects. Even though the word ceramic is derived from the Greek word "Keramos", meaning potter's clay or pottery, what many people don't realize is that ceramics play an important role almost everywhere you see and many times in places that you can't.

Besides the everyday objects of glassware and floor tiles, the ceramics of today are critical in helping computers and other electronic devices operate, in medical devices for improving people's health in various ways, in providing global telecommunications, and in protecting soldiers and vehicles during combat.

Ceramics are generally defined as inorganic, non-metallic materials that are made from powdered chemicals. They are typically crystalline in nature (their atoms are arranged in a systematic manner) and are compounds formed between metallic and non-metallic elements such as aluminum and oxygen (alumina, Al2O3), calcium and oxygen (calcia, CaO), silicon and nitrogen (silicon nitride, Si3N4), and so on.

Various "advanced ceramic" products are manufactured by combining high-purity chemicals into desired shapes and then heating them to very high temperatures. The shaped ceramic products thus made can have many desirable properties such as heat resistance, hardness, strength, low electrical conductivity, and unique electro-mechanical characteristics. Thus advanced ceramics are ceramics which are made by tightly controlled methods and therefore they exemplify an "advancement" over the general definition. As a consequence of these refined methods, a new class of ceramics called "advanced ceramics" is born.

Long lasting and harder than steel, advanced ceramics may be found in aircraft engines, automotive engines, cutting tools used for making metal products, the skin of space shuttles, knives, bullet proof armor, artificial hip-joints, computers and microelectronics.