1.

The needs to produce certain advance ceramic material is really based on the
advantages over the current and the new advance ceramic material. Silicon carbide as the
advance ceramic material is highly wear-resistant with good mechanical properties including
high temperature strength and thermal resistance of up to 1650°C. It has low density, high
hardness and wear resistance and excellent chemical resistance. The applications of SiC are
fixed and moving turbine components, seals, bearings, ball valve parts and semiconductor
wafer processing equipment. A significant area of use is in specialist thermal processing
applications, including beams and profiled supports, rollers, tubes, batts and plate setters, as
well as thermocouple protective sheaths.

. Advanced ceramics bear little resemblance to their origins. They offer unique and
amazingly powerful physical, thermal and electrical properties that have opened up a whole new
world of development opportunities for manufacturers in a wide range of industries. Advanced
ceramics provide the perfect solution and a cost-effective, high performance alternative to
traditional materials such as metals, plastics and glass.

In general terms, advanced ceramics exhibit exceptional properties that make them highly
resistant to melting, bending, stretching, corrosion or wear. Their hardness, physical stability,
extreme heat resistance, chemical inertness, biocompatibility, superior electrical properties and,
not least, their suitability for use in mass produced products make them one of the most
versatile groups of materials in the world.

3.

 Aluminous keatite, produced by leaching lithium out of LAS (beta spodumene) particles
prior to forming, is both strong and corrosion resistant. It has been used, for example, in
an experimental rotating regenerator for a turbine engine.
 Zirconia is used primarily for its extreme inertness to most metals. Zirconia ceramics
retain strength nearly up to their melting point -- well over 4,000°F, the highest of all
ceramics. Applications for fused or sintered zirconia include crucibles and furnace bricks.
  Beryllia ceramics are efficient heat dissipaters and excellent electrical insulators. They
are used in electrical and electronics applications, such as micro electric substrates,
transistor bases, and resistor cores.

 Ceramic insulators like alumina are also very good heat conductors. They can be used
as backing material or mounting brackets to which other electrical components are
attached, for example, the electronic systems in a modern car are mounted on alumina.

 The high degree of hardness of some advanced ceramics is put to use in the design of
body armor used by soldiers and police officers. One type of body armor uses the
extremely hard ceramic known as boron carbide (B4C). The ceramic is bonded onto a
plate of fiberglass. When a bullet strikes the ceramic plate, the bullet shatters into little
pieces.

4. Two types of bonding mechanisms occur in ceramic materials, ionic and covalent. Often
these mechanisms co-exist in the same ceramic material. Each type of bond leads to different
characteristics.

Ionic bonds most often occur between metallic and nonmetallic elements that have large
differences in their electronegativities. Ionically bonded structures tend to have rather high
melting points, since the bonds are strong and non-directional.

The other major bonding mechanism in ceramic structures is the covalent bond. Unlike ionic
bonds where electrons are transferred, atoms bonded covalently share electrons. Usually the
elements involved are nonmetallic and have small electronegativity differences.

Many ceramic materials contain both ionic and covalent bonding. The overall properties of these
materials depend on the dominant bonding mechanism. Compounds that are either mostly

The type of bonding (ionic or covalent) and the internal structure (crystalline or amorphous)
affects the properties of ceramic materials. The mechanical, electrical, thermal, and optical
properties of ceramics will be discussed in the following sections.

5. Modern ceramic crowns are much stronger than dental porcelains of the past, but no
type of all-ceramic crown can match the durability of all-metal or porcelain-fused-to-metal
crowns. These crowns usually cost around 10 to 20% more than metal crowns. They sometimes
chip or break.

The idea was to composite ceramic with another material reduce the cost and stronger and not
brittle.