Ceramic materials are routinely molded and formed, and then hardened under high temperature to some distinct shapes and patterns. Humans were crafting ceramics as long as 24,000 BC before we started using metals. Advanced ceramics are some of the strongest and most resilient materials known to man and they are applied in production of consumer goods, buildings, scientific and industrial equipment, vehicles, and more. The classification of ‘ceramic’ these days is much broader and includes such materials as glass, cement systems, and advanced ceramics. The following are some examples of ceramics.
What Are Some Examples or Types Of Ceramics?
Glass Ceramics
One of the many types of ceramics that are made by controlling the crystallization so that they have the properties of glass with the ceramics’ toughness and strength.
Properties: These ceramics are manufactured with state of a art manufacturing process, which generates materials with enviable characteristics like zero porosity, mechanical strength, durability, high temperatures, translucency, and biocompatibility. This material also has high chemical durability as well as superconductivity.
Examples: The ceramics of these types are used to produce parts in cookware, bakeware, and cooktop making. It is also applied to scientific and industrial equipment and medical devices.
Fired Bricks
Ceramics are often mined from minerals similar to clay and then heated to make bricks. We find that it is a common ceramic used in homes.
Properties: The properties of this ceramic are extensively different based on their manufacture as well as composition. In general, this ceramic is tough, brittle, and heavy as well as can survive higher temperatures.
Example Used: Some good use of this ceramic include chimneys, fireplaces, as well as walls. They are also often used in landscaping.
Silicon
Silicon is also a popular type of ceramics and is often considered superior because of its chemical properties. These ceramics are very abundant as they make up about 90% of the Earth’s crust. Sand And clays, which are used to make common ceramics, are often based on silicon abide. For instance, silica ceramic is used to create fired bricks, and the kaolinite material used in making porcelains are silicate material.
Properties of these types of Ceramics: This material has a brittle and hard crystalline solid as well as a semiconductor.
Example of Uses: Extreme purity crystalline silicon like polycrystalline silicon is used in the making of solar panels, and semiconductor devices such as integrated circuits. High-quality silicon minerals are used to create ceramics, and glass and are used as an aggregate in cement. They are considered the most common raw materials utilized in the field of construction.
Silicon Carbide
Silicon carbide in this vein is high quality semiconductor material composed of carbon and silicon naturally occurring as the extremely rare mineral Moissanite and other types of ceramics.
Properties: These types of ceramics are tough ceramic, as well as a semiconductor, which takes place in approximately 250 forms of crystalline. This ceramic is naturally colorless but frequently colored by impurities like iron. This shows low thermal development.
Example of Uses: It is usually used in cutting tools, furnaces, brake disks, abrasives, heating elements, and lighting as well as electrical power systems. Silicon carbide is prized as a jewel, being the same color and hardness as diamond. It's harder than zirconia and an artificial substitute.
Titanium Carbide
It’s black, heat resistant and extremely hard, type of ceramic.
Properties: The types of ceramics are heat resistant, extremely hard, as well as corrosion, and wear-resistant.
Example of Applications: These ceramics are usually utilized in tool bits, machine parts, heat shields as well as watch mechanisms.
Tungsten Carbide
This is a material manufactured with the same parts of carbon and tungsten, which is hard and dense.
Properties: These types of ceramics are dense, hard, tough, and strong with low electrical resistivity.
Example of Applications: Industrial equipment, cutting tools as well as sports equipment.
How are Ceramics Classified?
Ceramics are nonmetallic inorganic components important to daily living and lifestyle. Materials and ceramic engineers design the processes that make these products possible, make new types of ceramic products, and seek alternate and more practical uses for ceramic products in our everyday life.
Ceramic is everywhere. This type of material includes bricks, tile, toilets, glass, plates, and so on. This material can also be found in products like watches, snow skies, cars and even phone lines. Ceramics can be used to form enamel coatings, shuttle liners, and nose cones on airplanes for materials that can withstand the extreme temperatures and pressures. Ceramics can be lightweight or dense depending on the method of configuration. They will usually exhibit superb toughness and strength properties.
On the other hand, this ceramic is brittle. Ceramics can also be made to serve as electrically conductive materials or insulators. There is also a type of ceramics like superconductors that show magnetic properties.
Generally, ceramics are compounded of some clay, some powder and some earthen elements along with water, and then shaped into the required form. Once formed or shaped, this is a fire in an extreme heat oven, or a kiln. Ceramics are usually wrapped or coated in a waterproof, decorative, paint-like substance called glazes, and this is the part that is generally painted by the Americans in kiln and by the Europeans in a glazed ground.
What Are the Four Types of Pottery?
There are four basic types of pottery, porcelain, stoneware, earthenware, and Bone China. Those four vary by the clay used to create them, as well as the heat required to fire them.
Earthenware
Earthenware is considered the longest established form of pottery, way back in the Stone Age. Even if the composition of this pottery can differ significantly, a usual composition of this is 25% ball clay, 32% quartz, 28% kaolin as well as 15% feldspar. Earthenware is considered the softest form of pottery, being fired at the lowest heat. It absorbs water, is porous as well as scratched easily.
The classification of this kind of pottery takes account of all ancient pottery, terracotta objects, sixteenth century and later Chinese and Japanese pottery, and also pottery from Europe made up to the seventeenth century. In particular, it takes account of delft or faience in a tin-glazed type of earthenware. The best examples of fine art earthenware are Chinese clay warriors, also called the Terracotta Army.
To make it waterproof, they wrapped it in a glass-like liquid known as vitreous, and then they re-fired it in the kiln. Clay has iron that is used for the making of earthenware that provides a shade that ranges from buff to cream, dark red, black, or grey, by the amount available as well as the oxygen content in the kiln during the process of firing. This type of pottery can be as thin as porcelain and less tough, and strong, but more porous than stoneware. In general, this type of pottery is fired at high temperatures of 1000 to 1200 degrees Celsius.
Stoneware
Stoneware is dense and has a character similar to stone after heating; it has this name to explain. This pottery is impermeable or waterproof and usually opaque. It is grey in the natural condition, but after firing it becomes brown and may be dyed one or several of the type of glazes.
As a rule, such pottery is fired at high temperatures of 1000 to 1300 degrees Celsius. It is used to make commercial ware. However, renowned artists also prefer it in the making of fine art pottery. In China, during the time of the Shang Dynasty, the first stoneware was made. It first appeared in the fifteenth century in Germany. In the seventeenth century, a ceramicist in English first began to make a salt-glazed form of stoneware. Such development by the time Josiah Wedgwood came along in the eighteenth century, when he made black stoneware or basalts, and later white stoneware or Jasperware.
Porcelain
The difference between stoneware and porcelain is unclear. Ceramists from china define porcelain as a pottery item that provides a ringing tone once tapped. On the other hand, in the west, porcelain is set apart from stoneware by its translucent feature once held to the light. Stoneware varies from porcelain as it is opaque and usually just partially vitrified. It is fired at high temperatures.
China is the main origin of porcelain. It appears in the Han Dynasty, or perhaps later in the time of the Tang Dynasty, with the use of white china clay or kaolin and feldspathic rock or ground petuntse. Conversely, developments were done during the time of the Song Dynasty as well as the Yuan Dynasty and Ming Dynasty. 16-century ceramicists tried to remake its exceptional translucence using putting the glass into clay, making a form called soft porcelain. However, the formulation of the hard and true form of Chinese porcelain wasn’t discovered until in Germany, especially in Dresden and Meissen in the 1700s, when Ehrenfied Walter Von renowned ceramist, and Johan Friedrich Bottger an alchemist started utilizing feldspathic rock rather than glass.
Porcelain is broken down into various classifications such as:
Hard-paste or also known as true porcelain: Has added mineral materials to the clay, normally mica. It is fired at high temp and results in tougher objects.
Soft-paste: This is the least or low type of porcelain. This was discovered by European who fired at lower temps. It is regarded as a fragile or low type of porcelain. The best thing about it despite being low quality is that it does not require a fixed mineral to be made. Kaolin is combined with bone quartz, ash, soapstone as well as glass to yield this kind, with ball clay added into the mixture. It is also created under high temperatures.
Bone China
This replaces true porcelain in today’s time. It is considered the toughest type of porcelain. It is also very resistant to chip damage. It has remarkable physical strength and normally generates a white and translucent result. It has bone ash, kaolin, phosphates as well as feldspar.
Later, ceramicists such as Josiah Spode tweaked the usual formula by putting in powdered bone ash to create bone china- a typical form of porcelain that is less prone to damage like chipping. What is more, it comes with an ivory-white appearance.
Still, Europe loved the German form of porcelain, while Bone China is common in the USA as well as Britain. The hue of porcelain clay that is not unfired can be something from cream to white, while bone china is clear or white. When done firing, they are both white and usually fired at a high temperature of 1200 - 1450 degrees Celsius, which is a bit higher compared to stoneware.
Conclusion
As seen, ceramic is everywhere and it serves an important purpose in people’s lives. A ceramic is utilized in various things like appliances, and choosing the right clay is the initial step in making a ceramic or pottery. Depending on the needs, starters must begin with stoneware or earthenware. Advanced potters can opt for all types of clay. This can be used to make pottery, while some use a combination of them to adjust plasticity. If you are skilled in the pottery, then you can use any clay to make your masterpiece.
