Ceramics have great potential for electrical and magnetic applications. Ceramics like aluminum oxide do not conduct electricity making them great insulators. One example of a practical use of aluminum oxide is when disks made out of this material are stacked and used to suspend high-voltage power lines from transmission towers. Another widely used application of aluminum oxide is holding microchips. This is a great use of this oxide because it remains stable even when exposed to high-frequency currents.

Other ceramics make great semiconductors; such as barium titanate and strontium titanate made into small semiconductor chips are able to contain thousands of transistors, which allows electronic devices to become miniaturization. Insulating films made of either of these two materials can store amazingly large quantities of electricity in very small volumes. Devices with such capabilities are known as capacitors. Engineers are known to form miniature capacitors from ceramics and utilize them in televisions, computers radios and other electronics.

Ceramics are going green. New industrial ceramics technologies are being used to help people save money and energy. The technology called suspended particle device – sometimes called light valves – allow consumers to controls the amount of light that comes into their home or building. By giving the consumer the ability to control the amount of light that enters their home, they can allow more light to enter during the winter to keep it warmer, and vice versa during the warm months.

Another way industrial ceramics are being applied to environmentally friendly uses is in roofing materials. Studies have shone that ceramic tiles are able to reduce the amount of heat that enters a building by roughly 50% more than the traditional asphalt tiles. Likewise, they will help keep your heat or air conditioning in, helping you to save money and lower your carbon footprint.

High quality ceramics are often used in the manufacturing of a vast array of medical devices. From ceramic orthopedic joint replacements, x-ray equipment , fetal heart monitors and even DNA testing, ceramics help to make and keep people healthy  and living life to their full potential.

The field of dentistry has also advanced with the help of ceramics. In the past braces consisted of metal brackets and wires. But the blatant visibility, which made some older patients less likely to opt for the smile correcting device, caused orthodontists to search for a less conspicuous solution. Transparent polycrystalline alumina (TPA) was first identified by NASA as a way to track heat-seeking missiles. From there the decision was made to reapply this material to dentistry. These ceramic braces are nearly invisible, just at effective as metal braces, and extremely resistant to staining and discoloration.

Ceramics have helped hip replacements become more reliable and durable. With a great deal of strength and low wear rate, the use of zirconia has led to a considerable decrease in the trauma generally caused to the patient during a hip replacement operation. Other applications of a zirconia implant include knee joints, shoulders, finger joints, and even spinal implants. Zirconia is also being used for endoscopic components and pace makers.

The future of ceramics in the medical field includes coatings on prescription drugs for better, more accurate release into the patients system. Another application of ceramics that is up and coming is gene therapy. Use of ceramics as a safe and efficient gene transferring system is a key technology for gene therapy and tissue engineering. As medical knowledge and innovation continue, ceramics are sure to play a more vital role.

Sufferers of throat cancer face a variety of unfortunate effects — but thanks to advances in Yttria-stabilized Zirconia, some of those effects are being better mitigated and treated.

The University of Hull has devised a new tracheo-oesophageal fistula speech valve that restores the speech of people afflicted with throat cancer. Previous speech valves used a silicone material, but these new Yttria-stabilized Zirconia valves will last eight times longer.

These speech valves are really a modern medical marvel: basically, they replace the function of the vocal cords, using air from the lungs to create fluent speech. The Yttria-stabilized Zirconia is corrosive-resistant and discourages the build-up of “biofilm”, which hampers performance. Not only that, but Yttria-stabilized Zirconia ceramics offer much greater durability than silicone. Because it is more precisely built, the ceramic component speech valve is much more precisely functioning.

Yttria-stabilized Zirconia ceramics are usually used in applications calling for great chemical- and heat-resistance — industrial, petrochemical, and power generation applications. But these advances by the University of Hull show that engineered ceramics are extremely valuable, versatile materials with a variety of uses and applications.

Ceramitec 2012 is coming up, running from May 22^nd to the 25^th at the New Munich Trade Fair Centre. If you’re in the industrial ceramics arena or work with clay technology, Ceramitec is the place to be to rub elbows with your peers and get a first-hand look at some of the advancements that will be shaping the way our industry works for years to come.

With over 600 international vendors on hand, you’ll be able to take a look at the latest and greatest in the field of advanced industrial ceramics. The central focus of the expo is energy efficiency, and this topic will be prevalent in many of the panels and lectures that you might attend while at the conference.

The concepts of electronics, innovation and materials will also be at the forefront of discussions during Ceramitec 2012, including presentations from many of the leaders in the industrial ceramics industry.

If you’ll be in attendance, you can expect three days of enlightening discussion on the topic of industrial ceramics, including developing a good sense of where this arena is headed in the future. Maybe you’re just a visitor, maybe you’re an exhibitor, but either way you’ll be in for a whirlwind of insight.

As we move forward in the industrial ceramics industry, it’s important to keep abreast of what is going to be happening in the near future. Expos, conferences and lectures are a great way to stay ahead of the game and Ceramitec 2012 is a prime example. If you’re going, we’d love to hear from you – let us know what you’re excited about seeing by sounding off in the comments section below!

If you’ve been to the zoo in the last twenty years, you probably know that while the animals are well taken care of, the habitats they live in are sometimes very crude and usually a good distance away from the viewing area. Gorillas are a great example. The enclosure for gorillas is stereotypically a large, concrete area enclosed with metal bars in the past and forms of unbreakable glass in modern zoos. There is still usually a sizable distance between where you can stand to see the gorillas and the “walls” of their enclosure.

This set-up, while it has been working since public zoos became commonplace, does still have some kinks to work out. Sharp edges, concrete floors and metals, are potentially dangerous to animals. While there are obviously more dangers to face living in the wild, being in captivity places the responsibility for the well-being of the animal on us, and we should take whatever steps necessary to keep them healthy and happy. Another issue is the distance we can get to the animals. After all, the reason we have zoos in the first place is to be able to see animals in person with convenience.

Both of these problems can be solved by the application of industrial ceramics.

Recently, industrial ceramics have been used to create environments for animals that are less dangerous and more inviting while also allowing humans to get closer to the enclosures. Ceramics are tough, but they can also be molded into shapes that are curved and concave, versus the sharper and more abrasive metals and concretes of old zoos.

While nothing can truly emulate a forest or jungle, by using industrial ceramics to keep animals safe from injury and ensure that we get the closest experience to them possible.  In the future, zoos will no doubt be constructed nearly exclusively from safe and durable materials like industrial ceramics. So now seems like a good opportunity to get in on the ground floor!

If you have an opinion about how ceramics can be used to safely and securely improve our zoos, we’d love to hear about it! Let us know by sounding off in the comments section below!

In ferrous machining applications, it is common for polycrystalline cubic boron nitride (PCBN) tools have a tendency to chip on the micron scale, particularly during processes such as the turning of hardened steel.

A “chip breaker” gives the added benefit of controlling and guiding the flow and breaks of chips, while lessening contract stress to avoid white film build up. Today, applying cubic boron nitride (cBN, which is also the second-hardest ceramics material, next to diamonds) is the only practical way to create chip breakers of varying geometries, even though several other options have been pursued. An article by ceramicindustry.com discusses major advancements in this aspect of ceramics engineering, drew the following conclusion:

 ”Cubic boron nitride particle composite coatings can be readily applied to cutting inserts with chip breakers through the use of patented coating technology. In straight turning of AISI 4340 hardened steel, the coated chip breakers produced a tool life equivalent to PCBN-tipped flat inserts under identical conditions. The machined surface with chip breakers has a surface finish approaching 0.8 µm without the formation of a white layer. Thus, the ceramic coating-coated inserts can be an important complement to PCBN ceramics, offering extended tool life, improved machined surfaces and better economics.”

The article goes on to state that the cost of this coating is comparable to other options for chip breakers that currently exist in the industry, while adding the benefit of being able to be tailored to fit more specific geometries. While the price-point alone should be enough to sway most ceramics manufacturers, the efficiency of the material should also be taken into consideration, as “with its combination of hardness and toughness, the composite coating adheres well to the carbide substrate and does not show particle pull-out or coating delamination at a critical loading of 10 kg in scratch testing.”

With a larger range of applications and a cost-effective price, it is likely that this new generation of chip breaker will become a major part of ceramics engineering in years to come. We’d love to hear what you think about these developments, let us know by sounding off in the comments section below!

Increasing usage of miniature electric fields in industrial ceramics manufacturing may prove to be the key to more efficient and cost-effective production of industrial ceramics  – while improving overall product quality.

Co-author of a new study and Ph.D. (emeritus) of materials science and engineering, Hans Conrad, led a team of researchers at North Carolina State University to discover that by applying a 60-hertz AC field, they were able to create grains of ceramic as small as 134 nanometers. Conventional sintering processes generally result in grains around 360 nanometers in diameter. This is a reduction in size of around 63%. A recent article from ceramicindustry.com discusses the potential impact of this new discovery:

“The study indicates that ceramic manufacturers can make their products more quickly and cheaply while also improving product quality through the use of an inexpensive electric field. ‘We found that the use of a small electric field-with a current of only 0.6-0.8 amp/cm2- can result in improved sintering rates with much finer grain size,’ Conrad says. ‘You don’t use much energy, and you put it right at the atomic site where it is needed, rather than using more energy to create higher temperatures in a kiln, which is less efficient.’”

The study will be published in an upcoming edition of Scripta Materiala, with the author to be Di Yang, a senior research associate at North Carolina. This process could mark a huge evolutionary step in the field of ceramic engineering, as the use of a cheap electric field could result in not only an increase in efficiency, but an increase of the quality of the end-product as a whole.

If you’re in the industry of ceramics engineering, this new technology should be on your watch list. Let us know what you think of this new breakthrough by sounding off in the comments section below!

Scientists are busy studying the Higgs Boson, the origins of the universe, and even how to get more energy out of our finite earth. You’d think they’d be too busy to study of all things spider webs. You’d be wrong.

It turns out, researchers from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (aka MIT) are researching “how spider web-design localizes strain and damage, preserving the web as a whole”.

Now, that might sound kind of sill and impractical in the larger scheme of things. Who cares about spider webs when after all, there’s all that other important stuff mentioned above? Well, it turns out there are some practical ramifications to spider web study.

“Engineered structures are typically designed to withstand large loads with limited damage, but extreme loads are more difficult to account for,” a graduate student helping out with the study said. Spiders, though have obviated this extreme load failure problem by automatically accounting for failure, building failure into their webs, so that the web stays up even as strands break.

One of the neatest and most applicable, for our purposes  outcomes of the study, too, is that spider webs actually resemble “more typical engineering materials such as those that are linear elastic, like many ceramics”. It could be, in the future, we start building really massive, total-failure-proof ceramic structures modeled after, of all things, spiderwebs!

Giuseppe Pezzotti is not your average Japanese scientist. Obviously. But Professor Pezzotti is, if possible, even less your average Japanese scientist than even his name suggests. An interesting profile in the Japan Times sums up this idiosyncratic scientist.

For one, he comes from an aristocratic Italian family. And for two, he was cast out of that family for marrying a commoner. After graduating summa cum laude from Rome University, he lit off for Japan because of the country’s superior technological equipment. Pezzotti said, “One day I came across an image of the atomic structure of ceramic material provided by Osaka University, and I was fascinated by its clarity”. Oh yeah, that’s another thing about this surprising and brilliant scholar: he studies ceramics.

After becoming one of the first foreigners to be awarded tenure in Japan, he’s become a tenured full professor of ceramic physics. His courses focus on ceramic physics, nanomaterials, and ceramic chemistry. He does all this in Japanese, even though he never took a class in the language. Instead, he did an intensive study in Japanese vocabulary and worked on a 500 page Japanese-Italian technical translation job for another professor.

Professor Pezzotti’s work ethic seems, to put it mildly, quite healthy.

Asked to describe his work, Pezzotti embarks on a lengthy explication of quantum physics, nanotechnology, Raman spectroscopy and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It is while listening to this that the interviewer counts the 360 slim plastic drawers ‚ each containing copies of one of Pezzotti’s published scientific papers ‚ that line one wall of his copious office, along with part of his collection of ukiyo-e art. These are just a portion of the 550 scientific papers Pezzotti has authored or coauthored during his career.

Beyond all that, the professor also focuses on creating ceramic bone materials and joints. He is truly an inspiration in the field of ceramics.