Advanced ceramic components: Materials, fabrication, and applications

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Abstract

The global demand for ceramic materials with wide-ranging applications in the environment, precision tools, biomedical, and electronics, and environmental fields is on the increase. Several ceramic materials and methods of fabrication have been developed with task-specific properties. The material, the fabrication methods, and processing conditions impel characteristics including corrosion-resistant, outstanding optical and electrical properties, hardness and anti-aging. In this review, various materials for the preparation of ceramics and ceramic composites components were investigated to demonstrate the contribution of the materials and different fabrication methods to the properties of the ceramics components. The material properties, sintering temperature, casting technique, and pressure influences the ceramics grain size and porosity, which have an explicit effect on mechanical strength, corrosion-resistant, and optical properties of the ceramic components. The finishing of the ceramic components into a machinable shape requires careful attention to avoid defects. However, most conventional finishing methods are cost-intensive, hence, the need to commercialize 3-D printing for large scale and long-run applications. It is hoped that this review would propagate wider research on low cost and energy effective pathways to produce ceramics with dynamic properties, which can be applied in several fields with outstanding performance.

Introduction

The term ceramics comes from the Greek word “Keramicos” which basically means burnt materials. They are known for over a thousand centuries and are prepared from naturally occurring raw materials. Ceramics are normally inorganic and non-metallic solids (prepared from powdered materials), having relatively melting points and requires high temperature for their processing and applications. They are usually a compound of different elements or a combination of compounds, between metallic and non-metallic elements (mainly O, B, C, N), which can be oxides, carbides, borides, silicides. Their bonds are either totally ionic or the combination of covalent and ionic. Ceramics as compared to other materials present vast interesting properties including thermal insulation, lightness, high specific surface area and thermal shock resistance. Usually, ceramics do not deform at the long-operation cycle, facilitating lower cost of maintenance [1] and have excellent stability in a variety of organic solvents. They do not cause toxic effects in the marine environment because of facile tailoring of their pore structure, and chemical inertness [2]. There are two types of ceramics namely traditional and advanced ceramics. The former is made up of inorganic non-metallic solid (either non-metallic or metallic compounds) and includes clay (plastic materials), silica (filler) and feldspar (fluxes) while the latter is made up of oxides, nitrate compounds, carbides and non-silicate glass. Traditionally, ceramics are commonly oxide compositions are produced in both amorphous and crystalline states. In many forms, they are not fully dense and contain porosity at the micro and higher size range [3]. In traditional ceramics, clay confers hardness and ductility, silica determines high stability at elevated melting point and high temperature, and feldspar produces the glass phase when the ceramics are fired. Some examples of traditional ceramics include tiles, glasses, porcelain and bricks. Table 1 presents the advantages and disadvantages of traditional and advanced ceramics. Advanced ceramics are different from traditional ceramics by their higher strength, tailorable properties, improved toughness, higher operating temperatures and these characteristics make up modern ceramic components. The scope of this review only covers one aspect of ceramics which is the advanced ceramics. The trends and research effort on the advanced ceramics components formulation, fabrication, and applications are presented.

Section snippets

Advanced ceramic materials

Advanced ceramics can also be referred to as the high-performance ceramics, high-tech ceramics, engineering ceramics, fine ceramics, and technical ceramics. They are basically crystalline material of rigorously controlled composition and manufactured with detailed regulation from highly refined or/and characterized raw materials that give precisely specified attributes. Current ceramic materials may be oxides, carbides, nitrides, silicides, borides, etc. Table 2 presents a list and properties

Preparation of advanced ceramic materials

The preparation of advanced ceramic components involves the heating process of ceramic powders, which must undergo special handling to control the heterogeneity, chemical compositions, purity, particle size, particle size distribution (PSD) and specific shape. The aforementioned factors play a significant role in the properties of finished ceramic components. Theoretically, it is very possible to distinguish between finished ceramic components obtained from naturally harvested materials and

Fabrications of ceramic components

The fabrication of ceramic components can be achieved via several techniques. In general, ceramic components can be configured in a variety of geometries including hollow fibers, tubes, and flat discs. Furthermore, ceramic components can be processed in four different stages such as material preparation, processing, sintering and finishing. There are varieties of methods involved to process ceramics components including dry forming, wet forming, gel-casting, thixotropic casting, direct foaming,

Sintering of ceramics

Sintering process occurs through the bonding of particles upon heating via bulk mass transfer and surface-transport mechanisms, with its main goal being to obtain a fully dense solid component (some residual porosity remains in most cases). The bonds that are formed between the pre-existing bonding within the particles and the sintering particles are identical. The driving force being heat together with the elimination of surface energy. Basically, as the specific surface area of the powder

Finishing of ceramic components

Ceramic component in its processed state has some individual properties due to minor changes which are uncontrollable during the process. Because of gravitational effects and differential shrinkage during the sintering process, these can accumulate to minimum of 1%–2% distortion. This is in contrasts with similar polymeric or metallic components, where in-processing dimensional stability within a fraction of 1 % is maintained. Thus, to bring these advanced ceramic components to a common

Applications of ceramic components

According to their functions, advanced ceramic materials can be classified into two categories (electro-ceramic materials and the advanced structural ceramic materials). In advanced ceramics, the pure and high-quality powders (as presented in Table 2) form the basis. These powders, with sub-micron grains and narrow grain size distribution obtained from a synthetic production route are processed in various steps into green body with special properties (high physical and mechanical properties).

Conclusion and future outlook

In conclusion, alumina, boron, titanium, silicon, zirconia, and their nitrides derivatives are promising materials to produce ceramics components. Several synthetic methods for preparing ceramic components were elucidated. The solid-state reactions are the most widely used processes for the mass-production of cost-efficient ceramic powders. Also, the sol–gel technique, CVD, and polymer pyrolysis have been applied to generate high-purity ceramics precursor with defined properties. However, ZTA

Declaration of interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The first author acknowledges the financial support provided by the Shenyang University of Technology under the postdoctoral scheme. The authors also acknowledge the support of the Instituto de Energías Renovables (IER-UNAM), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Key Laboratory for Catalyst Synthesis Technology of Polymer of Liaoning Province, China (No. 2010-36) and the Engineering Laboratory for Advanced Polymer Material of Liaoning Province, China (No. 2012-1139).

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