Chapter 1 - Existence of advanced ceramic materials in human life

Abstract

Advanced ceramic materials improve our daily life by their continuous research in various fields. Likewise, they play a critical role in telecommunications, electronics, structural, medical, defense, and space applications. For structural applications, ceramic materials are being used due to their high strength and hardness, high wear, and erosive and corrosive resistance. Such adorable features make ceramic to be incorporated with any base material to enhance its properties. The ceramic material coating has also been done on metallic materials to improve their wear and corrosion properties. Some ceramic materials like hydroxyapatite, calcium phosphate, aluminum oxide, and bioactive glasses are used in the medical application as an implant. Implants made of these bioceramics have good biocompatibility, high load-bearing capacity, wear, and corrosion-resistant. However, high density and elasticity, low ductility, nonbiodegradability, and difficulty in fabrication are the main disadvantages of bioceramics. Specific ceramic materials have proven properties in the field of electronics applications. Generally, ceramic materials have high insulating properties, high dielectric constant, and good semiconducting properties. Therefore, these are used as capacitors, sensors and actuators, integrated circuits, oscillators, filters, etc. Due to the high melting point, ceramics are also used to make the components that work in a high-temperature environment, such as turbine blades, refractory materials, and thermal insulations in nuclear and thermal power plants.