Attività

What are ceramics?

What are ceramics?

Industrial ceramic, Ceramics are broadly defined as inorganic,

nonmetallic materials that exhibit such useful properties as high strength and hardness, high melting temperatures, chemical inertness, and low thermal and

electrical conductivity but that also display brittleness and sensitivity to flaws. As practical materials, they have a history almost as old as the human

race. Traditional ceramic products, made from common, naturally occurring minerals such as clay and sand, have long been the object of the potter, the

brickmaker, and the glazier. Modern advanced ceramics, on the other hand, are often produced under exacting conditions in the laboratory and call into play

the skills of the chemist, the physicist, and the engineer. Containing a variety of ingredients and manipulated by a variety of processing techniques,

ceramics are made into a wide range of industrial products, from common floor tile to nuclear fuel pellets. Yet all these disparate products owe their

utility to a set of properties that are universally recognized as ceramic-like, and these properties in turn owe their existence to chemical bonds and atomic

structures that are peculiar to the material. The composition, structure, and properties of industrial ceramic, their processing into both traditional and advanced materials, and the products made from those materials are the

subject of many articles on particular traditional or advanced ceramic products, such as whitewares, abrasives, conductive ceramics, and bioceramics. For a

more comprehensive understanding of the subject, however, the reader is advised to begin with the central article, on the composition, structure, and

properties of ceramic materials.

A ceramic is an inorganic non-metallic solid made up of either metal or non-metal compounds that have been shaped and then hardened by heating to high

temperatures. In general, they are hard, corrosion-resistant and brittle.

'Ceramic' comes from the Greek word meaning ‘pottery’. The clay-based domestic wares, art objects and building products are familiar to us all,

but pottery is just one part of the ceramic world.

Nowadays the term ‘ceramic’ has a more expansive meaning and includes materials like glass, advanced ceramics and some cement systems as well.

Traditional ceramics – pottery

Pottery is one of the oldest human technologies. Fragments of clay pottery found recently in Hunan Province in China have been carbon dated to 17,500–

18,300 years old.

The major types of pottery are described as earthenware, stoneware and porcelain.

Earthenware is used extensively for pottery tableware and decorative objects. It is one of the oldest materials used in pottery.