Ceramic materials are inorganic, non-metallic materials made from compounds of a metal and a

non metal. Ceramic materials may be crystalline or partly crystalline. They are formed by the action
of heat and subsequent cooling.[1] Clay was one of the earliest materials used to produce ceramics,
as pottery, but many different ceramic materials are now used in domestic, industrial and building
products. Ceramic materials tend to be strong, stiff, brittle, chemically inert, and non-conductors of
heat and electricity, but their properties vary widely. For example, porcelain is widely used to make
electrical insulators, but some ceramic compounds are superconductors.
Types of ceramic materials

A ceramic material may be defined as any inorganic crystalline material, compounded of a metal and
a non-metal. It is solid and inert. Ceramic materials are brittle, hard, strong in compression, weak in
shearing and tension. They withstand chemical erosion that occurs in an acidic or caustic
environment. In many cases withstanding erosion from the acid and bases applied to it. Ceramics
generally can withstand very high temperatures such as temperatures that range from 1,000 C to
1,600 C (1,800 F to 3,000 F). Exceptions include inorganic materials that do not have oxygen
such as silicon carbide. Glass by definition is not a ceramic because it is an amorphous solid (noncrystalline). However, glass involves several steps of the ceramic process and its mechanical
properties behave similarly to ceramic materials.
Traditional ceramic raw materials include clay minerals such as kaolinite, more recent materials
include aluminium oxide, more commonly known as alumina. The modern ceramic materials, which
are classified as advanced ceramics, include silicon carbide and tungsten carbide. Both are valued
for their abrasion resistance, and hence find use in corrosive environments such as the wear plates
of crushing equipment in mining operations where other ceramic materials would not be suitable.
Advanced ceramics are also used in the medicine, electrical, and aerospace industries. [2]
Crystalline ceramicsCrystalline ceramic materials are not amenable to a great range of processing.

Methods for dealing with them tend to fall into one of two categories - either make the ceramic in the
desired shape, by reaction in situ, or by "forming" powders into the desired shape, and
then sintering to form a solid body. Ceramic forming techniques include shaping by hand (sometimes
including a rotation process called "throwing"), slip casting, tape casting (used for making very thin
ceramic capacitors, etc.), injection moulding, dry pressing, and other variations. (See also Ceramic
forming techniques. Details of these processes are described in the two books listed below.)
Non-crystalline ceramicsNon-crystalline ceramics, being glasses, tend to be formed from melts. The
glass is shaped when either fully molten, by casting, or when in a state of toffee-like viscosity, by
methods such as blowing to a mold. If later heat-treatments cause this glass to become partly
crystalline, the resulting material is known as a glass-ceramic.

Properties of ceramics[edit]
The physical properties of any ceramic substance are a direct result of its crystalline structure and
chemical composition. Solid state chemistry reveals the fundamental connection between
microstructure and properties such as localized density variations, grain size distribution, type of
porosity and second-phase content, which can all be correlated with ceramic properties such as

mechanical strength by the Hall-Petch equation, hardness, toughness, dielectric constant, and
the optical properties exhibited bytransparent materials.
Physical properties of chemical compounds which provide evidence of chemical composition include
odor, color, volume, density (mass / volume), melting point, boiling point, heat capacity, physical form
at room temperature (solid, liquid or gas), hardness, porosity, and index of refraction.
Ceramography is the art and science of preparation, examination and evaluation of ceramic
microstructures. Evaluation and characterization of ceramic microstructures is often implemented on
similar spatial scales to that used commonly in the emerging field of nanotechnology: from tens
of angstroms (A) to tens of micrometers (m). This is typically somewhere between the minimum
wavelength of visible light and the resolution limit of the naked eye.
The microstructure includes most grains, secondary phases, grain boundaries, pores, micro-cracks,
structural defects and hardness microindentions. Most bulk mechanical, optical, thermal, electrical
and magnetic properties are significantly affected by the observed microstructure. The fabrication
method and process conditions are generally indicated by the microstructure. The root cause of
many ceramic failures is evident in the cleaved and polished microstructure. Physical properties
which constitute the field ofmaterials science and engineering include the following:
Mechanical properties

Mechanical properties are important in structural and building materials as well as textile fabrics.
They include the many properties used to describe the strength of materials such
as: elasticity / plasticity, tensile strength, compressive strength, shear strength, fracture
toughness& ductility (low in brittle materials), and indentation hardness.
Fracture mechanics is the field of mechanics concerned with the study of the formation and
subsequent propagation of microcracks in materials. It uses methods of analytical solid mechanics to
calculate the thermodynamic driving force on a crack and the methods of experimental solid
mechanics to characterize the material's resistance to fracture and catastrophic failure.
In modern materials science, fracture mechanics is an important tool in improving the mechanical
performance of materials and components. It applies the physics of stress and strain, in particular
the theories of elasticity and plasticity, to the microscopiccrystallographic defects found in real
materials in order to predict the macroscopic mechanical failure of bodies. Fractography is widely
used with fracture mechanics to understand the causes of failures and also verify the
theoretical failure predictions with real life failures.
Thus, since cracks and other microstructural defects can lower the strength of a structure beyond
that which might be predicted by the theory of crystalline objects, a different property of the material
above and beyond conventional strengthis needed to describe the fracture resistance of
engineering materials. This is the reason for the need for fracture mechanics: the evaluation of the
strength of flawed structures.

In this context, Fracture toughness is a property which describes the ability of a material containing a
crack to resist fracture, and is one of the most important properties of any material for virtually all
design applications. Fracture toughness is a quantitative way of expressing a material's resistance
to brittle fracture when a crack is present. If a material has a large value of fracture toughness it will
probably undergo ductile fracture. Brittle fracture is very characteristic of materials with a low fracture
toughness value. Fracture mechanics, which leads to the concept of fracture toughness, was largely
based on the work of A. A. Griffith who, amongst other things, studied the behaviour of cracks in
brittle materials. This describes "ceramics are strong in compression and weak in tension"
Ceramic materials are usually ionic or covalent bonded materials, and can
be crystalline or amorphous. A material held together by either type of bond will tend
to fracture before any plastic deformation takes place, which results in poor toughness in these
materials. Additionally, because these materials tend to be porous, the pores and other microscopic
imperfections act as stress concentrators, decreasing the toughness further, and reducing the tensile
strength. These combine to give catastrophic failures, as opposed to the normally much more
gentle failure modes of metals.
These materials do show plastic deformation. However, due to the rigid structure of the crystalline
materials, there are very few available slip systems for dislocations to move, and so they deform
very slowly. With the non-crystalline (glassy) materials, viscous flow is the dominant source of plastic
deformation, and is also very slow. It is therefore neglected in many applications of ceramic
materials.
To overcome the brittle behaviour, ceramic material development has introduced the class
of ceramic matrix composite materials, in which ceramic fibers are embedded and with specific
coatings are forming fiber bridges across any crack. This mechanism substantially increases the
fracture toughness of such ceramics. The ceramic disc brakes are, for example using a ceramic
matrix composite material manufactured with a specific process.

Electrical properties
Semiconductors
Some ceramics are semiconductors. Most of these are transition metal oxides that are II-VI
semiconductors, such as zinc oxide.
While there are prospects of mass-producing blue LEDs from zinc oxide, ceramicists are most
interested in the electrical properties that show grain boundary effects.
One of the most widely used of these is the varistor. These are devices that exhibit the property that
resistance drops sharply at a certain threshold voltage. Once the voltage across the device reaches
the threshold, there is a breakdown of the electrical structure in the vicinity of the grain boundaries,
which results in its electrical resistance dropping from several megohms down to a few
hundred ohms. The major advantage of these is that they can dissipate a lot of energy, and they self-

reset after the voltage across the device drops below the threshold, its resistance returns to being
high.
This makes them ideal for surge-protection applications; as there is control over the threshold
voltage and energy tolerance, they find use in all sorts of applications. The best demonstration of
their ability can be found in electrical substations, where they are employed to protect the
infrastructure from lightning strikes. They have rapid response, are low maintenance, and do not
appreciably degrade from use, making them virtually ideal devices for this application.
Semiconducting ceramics are also employed as gas sensors. When various gases are passed over
a polycrystalline ceramic, its electrical resistance changes. With tuning to the possible gas mixtures,
very inexpensive devices can be produced.
Superconductivity[edit]
The Meissner effect demonstrated by levitating a magnet above a cuprate superconductor, which is cooled
byliquid nitrogen

Under some conditions, such as extremely low temperature, some ceramics exhibit high
temperature superconductivity. The exact reason for this is not known, but there are two major
families of superconducting ceramics.
Ferroelectricity and supersets[edit]
Piezoelectricity, a link between electrical and mechanical response, is exhibited by a large number of
ceramic materials, including the quartz used to measure time in watches and other electronics. Such
devices use both properties of piezoelectrics, using electricity to produce a mechanical motion
(powering the device) and then using this mechanical motion to produce electricity (generating a
signal). The unit of time measured is the natural interval required for electricity to be converted into
mechanical energy and back again.
The piezoelectric effect is generally stronger in materials that also exhibit pyroelectricity, and all
pyroelectric materials are also piezoelectric. These materials can be used to inter convert between
thermal, mechanical, or electrical energy; for instance, after synthesis in a furnace, a pyroelectric
crystal allowed to cool under no applied stress generally builds up a static charge of thousands of
volts. Such materials are used in motion sensors, where the tiny rise in temperature from a warm
body entering the room is enough to produce a measurable voltage in the crystal.
In turn, pyroelectricity is seen most strongly in materials which also display the ferroelectric effect, in
which a stable electric dipole can be oriented or reversed by applying an electrostatic field.
Pyroelectricity is also a necessary consequence of ferroelectricity. This can be used to store
information in ferroelectric capacitors, elements of ferroelectric RAM.

The most common such materials are lead zirconate titanate and barium titanate. Aside from the
uses mentioned above, their strong piezoelectric response is exploited in the design of highfrequency loudspeakers, transducers for sonar, and actuators for atomic force and scanning
tunneling microscopes.
Positive thermal coefficient
Silicon nitride rocket thruster. Left: Mounted in test stand. Right: Being tested with H 2/O2 propellants.Increases

in temperature can cause grain boundaries to suddenly become insulating in some semiconducting
ceramic materials, mostly mixtures of heavy metal titanates. The critical transition temperature can
be adjusted over a wide range by variations in chemistry. In such materials, current will pass through
the material until joule heating brings it to the transition temperature, at which point the circuit will be
broken and current flow will cease. Such ceramics are used as self-controlled heating elements in,
for example, the rear-window defrost circuits of automobiles.
At the transition temperature, the material's dielectric response becomes theoretically infinite. While
a lack of temperature control would rule out any practical use of the material near its critical
temperature, the dielectric effect remains exceptionally strong even at much higher temperatures.
Titanates with critical temperatures far below room temperature have become synonymous with
"ceramic" in the context of ceramic capacitors for just this reason.
Optical properties Optically transparent materials focus on the response of a material to incoming

lightwaves of a range of wavelengths. Frequency selective optical filters can be utilized to alter or
enhance the brightness and contrast of a digital image. Guided lightwave transmission via frequency
selectivewaveguides involves the emerging field of fiber optics and the ability of certain glassy
compositions as a transmission medium for a range of frequencies simultaneously (multi-mode
optical fiber) with little or no interference between competing wavelengths or frequencies.
This resonantmode of energy and data transmission via electromagnetic (light) wave propagation,
though low powered, is virtually lossless. Optical waveguides are used as components in Integrated
optical circuits (e.g. light-emitting diodes, LEDs) or as the transmission medium in local and long
haul optical communication systems. Also of value to the emerging materials scientist is the
sensitivity of materials to radiation in the thermal infrared (IR) portion of the electromagnetic
spectrum. This heat-seeking ability is responsible for such diverse optical phenomena as Nightvision and IR luminescence.

Examples of ceramics materials

Until the 1950s, the most important ceramic materials were (1) pottery, bricks and tiles,
(2) cements and (3) glass. A composite material of ceramic and metal is known as cermet.

Barium titanate (often mixed with strontium titanate) displays ferroelectricity, meaning that its
mechanical, electrical, and thermal responses are coupled to one another and also historydependent. It is widely used in electromechanical transducers, ceramic capacitors, and data
storage elements. Grain boundary conditions can create PTC effects in heating elements.

Bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide, a high-temperature superconductor

Boron nitride is structurally isoelectronic to carbon and takes on similar physical forms:
a graphite-like one used as a lubricant, and a diamond-like one used as an abrasive.

Earthenware used for domestic ware such as plates and mugs.

Ferrite is used in the magnetic cores of electrical transformers and magnetic core memory.

Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) was developed at the United States National Bureau of
Standards in 1954. PZT is used as an ultrasonic transducer, as its piezoelectric properties
greatly exceed those of Rochelle salt.[3]

Magnesium diboride (MgB2) is an unconventional superconductor.

Porcelain is used for a wide range of household and industrial products.

Sialon (Silicon Aluminium Oxynitride) has high strength; resistance to thermal shock,
chemical and wear resistance, and low density. These ceramics are used in non-ferrous molten
metal handling, weld pins and the chemical industry.

Silicon carbide (SiC) is used as a susceptor in microwave furnaces, a commonly used

Silicon nitride (Si3N4) is used as an abrasive powder.

Steatite (magnesium silicates) is used as an electrical insulator.

Titanium carbide Used in space shuttle re-entry shields and scratchproof watches.

Uranium oxide (UO2), used as fuel in nuclear reactors.

Yttrium barium copper oxide (YBa2Cu3O7-x), another high temperature superconductor.

Zinc oxide (ZnO), which is a semiconductor, and used in the construction of varistors.

Zirconium dioxide (zirconia), which in pure form undergoes many phase changes between
room temperature and practical sintering temperatures, can be chemically "stabilized" in several
different forms. Its high oxygen ion conductivity recommends it for use in fuel cells and
automotive oxygen sensors. In another variant, metastable structures can impart transformation
toughening for mechanical applications; most ceramic knife blades are made of this material.

Partially stabilised zirconia (PSZ) is much less brittle than other ceramics and is used for
metal forming tools, valves and liners, abrasive slurries, kitchen knives and bearings subject to
severe abrasion.[4]