Structure Of Ceramic Materials

Usually they are metal oxides that is compounds of metallic elements and oxygen but many ceramics especially advanced ceramics are compounds of metallic elements and carbon nitrogen or sulfur.

Structure of ceramic materials.

A common definition of a ceramic is a hard material that is held together with ionic and covalent bonds. This is called a compound. Ceramics play an important role in our day to day life. In atomic structure they are most often crystalline although they also may contain a combination of glassy and crystalline phases.

Ceramics can appear as either crystalline or amorphous solids the latter group being called glasses. The bonding of atoms together is much stronger in covalent and ionic bonding than in metallic. Graphene is currently considered the strongest known material. Development of ceramics helps to decrease the demand in industries.

Their physical properties are an expression not only of their composition but primarily of their structure. Additionally carbon based materials such as carbon fiber carbon nanotubes and graphene can be considered ceramics. Ceramics are by definition natural or synthetic inorganic non metallic polycrystalline materials. Ceramic materials like clay are categorized as traditional ceramics and normally they are made of clay silica and feldspar.

The two most common chemical bonds for ceramic materials are covalent and ionic. Compare to other materials ceramics have some unique properties. According to this definition elemental carbon is a ceramic. All ceramic materials are prepared by ceramic technology and powder substances are used as the initial raw materials.

The properties of ceramics however also depend on their microstructure. As its name suggests traditional ceramics are not supposed to meet rigid specific properties after their production so cheap technologies are utilized for most of the production processes. Polycrystalline materials are formed by multiple crystal grains joined together during the production process whereas monocrystalline materials are grown as one three dimensional crystal. Thus in order to fully understand the properties of ceramics a knowledge of their structure is essential.

In ceramics the negatively charged ions anions are often significantly different in size from the positively charged ions cations. Concise encyclopedia of advanced ceramic materials 1991. Generally they are inorganic and non metallic. Structural ceramics are typically manufactured by a variety of techniques including injection molding uniaxial hot pressing compression molding slip casting and sintering.

Sometimes even monocrystalline materials such as diamond and sapphire are erroneously included under the term ceramics. Ceramics are compounds of metallic elements and non metallic substances such as oxides nitrides and silicates. Most ceramics are made up of two or more elements.