advanced ceramics

▪ ceramics

Introduction

      substances and processes used in the development and manufacture of ceramic materials that exhibit special properties.

      As is pointed out in the article ceramic composition and properties, ceramics are traditionally described as inorganic, nonmetallic solids that are prepared from powdered materials, are fabricated into products through the application of heat, and display such characteristic properties as hardness, strength, low electrical conductivity, and brittleness. Advanced ceramics represent an “advancement” over this traditional definition. Through the application of a modern materials science approach, new materials or new combinations of existing materials have been designed that exhibit surprising variations on the properties traditionally ascribed to ceramics. As a result, there are now ceramic products that are as tough and electrically conductive as some metals. Developments in advanced ceramic processing continue at a rapid pace, constituting what can be considered a revolution in the kind of materials and properties obtained.

      With the development of advanced ceramics, a more detailed, “advanced” definition of the material is required. This definition has been supplied by the 1993 Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards (VAMAS), which described an advanced ceramic as “an inorganic, nonmetallic (ceramic), basically crystalline material of rigorously controlled composition and manufactured with detailed regulation from highly refined and/or characterized raw materials giving precisely specified attributes.” A number of distinguishing features of advanced ceramics are pointed out in this definition. First, they tend to lack a glassy component; i.e., they are “basically crystalline.” Second, microstructures are usually highly engineered, meaning that grain sizes, grain shapes, porosity, and phase distributions (for instance, the arrangements of second phases such as whiskers and fibres) are carefully planned and controlled. Such planning and control require “detailed regulation” of composition and processing, with “clean-room” processing being the norm and pure synthetic compounds rather than naturally occurring raw materials being used as precursors in manufacturing. Finally, advanced ceramics tend to exhibit unique or superior functional attributes that can be “precisely specified” by careful processing and quality control. Examples include unique electrical properties such as superconductivity or superior mechanical properties such as enhanced toughness or high-temperature strength. Because of the attention to microstructural design and processing control, advanced ceramics often are high value-added products.

      Advanced ceramics are referred to in various parts of the world as technical ceramics, high-tech ceramics, and high-performance ceramics. The terms engineering ceramics and fine ceramics are used in the United Kingdom and Japan, respectively. In this article the term advanced ceramics is used in order to distinguish the material from traditional ceramics, a category of industrial ceramics based on raw materials that are fabricated into products with comparatively little alteration from their natural state. The manufacture of traditional ceramics is covered in the article traditional ceramics.

      This article focuses on the types of chemical precursors and processing techniques employed in the manufacture of all advanced ceramic products. From this survey readers can proceed to separate articles on specific advanced ceramic products, links to which are provided at the end of this article.

Chemical routes to precursors

      Like their traditional counterparts, advanced ceramics are often made by mixing and calcining (firing together) precursor powders. Unlike traditional ceramics, however, naturally occurring raw materials are seldom employed. Instead, highly pure synthetic precursors are typically used. In addition, liquid-phase sintering, a method of densifying powders that is common in traditional ceramic processing, is seldom employed. Instead, advanced ceramics are densified by transient-liquid sintering (also referred to as reactive-liquid sintering) or solid-state sintering (described later in this article). The most important factor in these sintering methods is small particle size. Small particles have a larger ratio of surface area to mass and therefore yield a higher driving force for sintering. Small particle sizes also reduce the distances over which diffusion of material must take place. Ceramists therefore take care to produce active ceramic powders with small grain size, usually in the submicrometre range—i.e., smaller than one micrometre, or one-millionth of a metre (0.000039 inch).

      A major issue in the preparation of powdered precursors, especially for electroceramic applications, is chemical homogeneity—that is, the establishment of uniform chemical composition throughout the mixture. Standard solid-state techniques for processing separate precursor powders can approach homogeneity in the final product only after many grinding and firing steps. A number of chemical approaches therefore have been developed in order to improve mixing, even down to the atomic level. Often these techniques involve the decomposition of salts—for instance, carbonates, nitrates, and sulfates—into the desired chemical form. As is explained in the article ceramic composition and properties, most ceramics are oxides of metallic elements, although many ceramics (especially advanced ceramics) consist of carbide, nitride, and boride compounds as well. The various chemical techniques for achieving homogenous, small-grained powders are described in turn below.

Coprecipitation and freeze-drying

      Often the salt compounds of two desired precursors can be dissolved in aqueous solutions and subsequently precipitated from solution by pH adjustment. This process is referred to as coprecipitation. With care, the resulting powders are intimate and reactive mixtures of the desired salts. In freeze-drying, another route to homogenous and reactive precursor powders, a mixture of water-soluble salts (usually sulfates) is dissolved in water. Small droplets are then rapidly frozen by spraying the solution into a chilled organic liquid such as hexane. With rapid freezing of the spray droplets into small ice crystals, segregation of the chemical constituents is minimized. The frozen material is removed from the hexane by sieving, and water is then removed from the ice by sublimation under vacuum.

      After coprecipitation or freeze-drying the resulting powders undergo intermediate high-temperature calcination to decompose the salts and produce fine crystallites of the desired oxides.

Spray roasting

      Spray roasting involves spray atomization of solutions of water-soluble salts into a heated chamber. The temperature and transit time are adjusted so as to accomplish rapid evaporation and oxidation. The result is a high-purity powder with fine particle size. A modification of spray roasting, known as rapid thermal decomposition of solutions (RTDS), can yield nano-size oxide powders—that is, particles measured in nanometres (one-billionth of a metre).

The sol-gel route

      An increasingly popular method for producing ceramic powders is sol-gel processing. Stable dispersions, or sols, of small particles (less than 0.1 micrometre) are formed from precursor chemicals such as metal alkoxides or other metalorganics. By partial evaporation of the liquid or addition of a suitable initiator, a polymer-like, three-dimensional bonding takes place within the sol to form a gelatinous network, or gel. The gel can then be dehydrated and calcined to obtain a fine, intimately mixed ceramic powder.

The Pechini process

      A process related to the sol-gel route is the Pechini, or liquid mix, process (named after its American inventor, Maggio Pechini). An aqueous solution of suitable oxides or salts is mixed with an alpha-hydroxycarboxylic acid such as citric acid. Chelation, or the formation of complex ring-shaped compounds around the metal cations, takes place in the solution. A polyhydroxy alcohol is then added, and the liquid is heated to 150°–250° C (300°–480° F) to allow the chelates to polymerize, or form large, cross-linked networks. As excess water is removed by heating, a solid polymeric resin results. Eventually, at still higher temperatures of 500°–900° C (930°–1,650° F), the resin is decomposed or charred, and ultimately a mixed oxide is obtained. Particle size is extremely small, typically 20 to 50 nanometres (although there is agglomeration of these particles into larger clusters), with intimate mixing taking place on the atomic scale.

Combustion synthesis

      A modification of the Pechini process is combustion synthesis. One version of this process involves a reaction between nitrate solutions and the amino acid glycine. The glycine, in addition to complexing with the metal cations and increasing their solubility, serves as a fuel during charring. After much of the water has been evaporated, a viscous liquid forms that autoignites around 150°–200° C (300°–400° F). Combustion temperatures rapidly exceed 1,000° C (1,800° F) and convert the material to fine, intimately mixed, and relatively nonagglomerated crystallites of the complex oxide desired. This technique is referred to as the glycine-nitrate process.

High-temperature synthesis

      In a reaction known as self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS), highly reactive metal particles ignite in contact with boron, carbon, nitrogen, and silica to form boride, carbide, nitride, and silicide ceramics. Since the reactions are extremely exothermic (heat-producing), the reaction fronts propagate rapidly through the precursor powders. Usually, the ultimate particle size can be controlled by the particle size of the precursors.

Exotic energy deposition

      So-called exotic energy deposition systems also are employed in the processing of ceramic powders, often resulting in extremely small clusters of atoms or ions or nano-size particles. Among other techniques, vacuum evaporation/condensation can be employed to make nanoparticles. In this system metal sources are heated through electrical resistivity under conditions of ultra-high vacuum. Metal atoms evaporate and then form clusters that deposit on a thermal convection collector that is chilled by liquid nitrogen. The nanoparticles can be oxidized before or after being scraped from the collector.

Consolidation

Traditional methods

      Many of the same consolidation processes used for traditional ceramics—e.g., pressing, extrusion, slip casting—are also employed for advanced ceramics. A high degree of sophistication has been obtained in these processes. An outstanding example is the extruded honeycomb-shaped structure used as the catalyst support in automotive catalytic convertors. These small structures have hundreds of open cells per square centimetre, with wall thicknesses of less than 0.1 millimetre. The extrusion of such fine shapes is made possible by the addition of a hydraulic (water-setting) polymer resin to the mix. The resin rapidly cures upon extrusion of the mix into hot water and imparts “green” (prefired) strength to the structure. (Pressing, extrusion, and slip casting are described in the article traditional ceramics.)

Tape casting

 Tape casting is another process that was originally used with traditional ceramics but has achieved a high level of sophistication for advanced ceramics. In particular, tape-casting methods are used to make substrates for integrated circuits and the multilayer structures used in both integrated-circuit packages and multilayer capacitors. Figure 1—> is a schematic diagram of a common tape-casting method called doctor blading. In this process a ceramic powder slurry, containing an organic solvent such as ethanol and various other additives (e.g., polymer binder), is continuously cast onto a moving carrier surface made of a smooth, “no-stick” material such as Teflon (trademark). A smooth knife edge spreads the slurry to a specified thickness, the solvent is evaporated, and the tape is rolled onto a take-up reel for additional processing.

      Two other tape-casting methods are the waterfall technique and the paper-casting process. In the waterfall technique a conveyor belt carries a flat surface through a continuous, recirculated waterfall of slurry. This method—which is commonly employed to coat candy with chocolate—has also been used to form thin-film dielectrics for capacitors as well as thick-film porous electrodes for fuel cells. The paper-casting process involves dipping a continuous paper tape into a ceramic powder slurry. The coated paper is dried and rolled onto take-up reels. In subsequent firing operations the paper is burned away, leaving the ceramic structure.

Injection molding

      Injection molding, commonly employed in polymer processing, also is employed for advanced ceramics. In injection molding a ceramic mix is forced through a heated tubular barrel by action of a screw or plunger. The mix consists of ceramic powder plus a thermoplastic polymer that softens with heat. The heated barrel of the injection molding machine ensures that the mix will flow under pressure, and the screw or plunger forces the fluid mix into a cold die cavity, where the mass hardens to the shape specified by the cavity. Complex shapes can be achieved in injection molding. Outstanding examples are rotors for turbochargers and rotor blades and stator vanes for gas turbines, made from silicon carbide and silicon nitride.

Densification

Solid-state sintering

      Like traditional ceramics, advanced ceramics are densified from powders by applying heat—a process known as sintering. Unlike traditional ceramics, however, advanced powders are not bonded by the particle-dissolving action of glassy liquids that appear at high temperatures. Instead, solid-state sintering predominates. In this process, matter from adjacent particles, under the influence of heat and pressure, diffuses to “neck” regions that grow between the particles and ultimately bond the particles together. As the boundaries between grains grow, porosity progressively decreases until, in a final stage, pores close off and are no longer interconnected.

      Since no glassy phase is needed in solid-state sintering to bond particles, there is no residual glass at the grain boundaries of the resulting dense ceramic that would degrade its properties. As a result, advanced ceramics have improved properties—e.g., strength or conductivity—over their liquid-sintered traditional counterparts, especially at elevated temperatures.

      Nevertheless, while pores located at the grain boundaries can be eliminated by grain boundary diffusion, pores left inside the growing grains are extremely difficult to eliminate, no matter how long the object is sintered. For this reason sintering aids are often used to enhance the sintering of advanced ceramics. In reactive-liquid, or transient-liquid, sintering, a chemical additive produces a temporary liquid that facilitates the initial stages of sintering. The liquid is subsequently evaporated, resorbed by the solid particles, or crystallized into a solid.

 Solid-state sintering is also aided by chemical additives. A classic example is the sintering of alumina lamp envelopes for sodium-vapour street lights. The lamp envelope must be able to contain the hot sodium discharge, and at the same time it must be transparent, or at least translucent, to visible light. The necessary refractory properties can be found in alumina, but the material does not sinter to translucency, and residual pores that remain within the grains act to scatter light. With magnesia as a sintering aid, however, alumina sinters to translucency (as shown in Figure 2—>). Apparently, magnesia slows the migration of grain boundaries during sintering. Pores remain on these boundaries and are eliminated by grain boundary diffusion. Extremely low porosities can be achieved.

Pressure-assisted sintering

      The sintering processes described above can be assisted by the application of pressure. Pressure increases the driving force for densification, and it also decreases the temperature needed for sintering to as low as half the melting point of the ceramic. Furthermore, shape forming and densification can often be accomplished in a single step. Two popular pressure-assisted sintering methods are followed—hot pressing and hot isostatic pressing (HIP).

 In hot pressing a heated single-action or dual-action die press is employed. The material composing or lining the rams and die walls is extremely important, since it must not react with the ceramic being hot-pressed. Unfortunately, complex shapes cannot be processed by hot pressing. Hot isostatic pressing involves immersing the green ceramic in a high-pressure fluid (usually an inert gas such as argon or helium) at elevated temperature. For the applied pressure to squeeze out the residual porosity, the ceramic piece must first be presintered to the closed porosity stage (no open, interconnected pores), or else it must be encapsulated with a viscous coating such as glass. During the “HIPing” process, shown in Figure 3—>, the high-pressure fluid then presses on the exterior, and residual gases from within the piece bubble out and are eliminated. Preformed complex shapes such as turbine blades, rotors, and stators can be densified by HIP.

Rapid heating (heat)

      Exotic energy deposition methods also are used in the sintering of advanced ceramics. One reason is that conventional radiant heating is slow, so that ceramic powders lose much of their activity, or sinterability, during heat-up. It is therefore advantageous to heat ceramics to the sintering temperature as rapidly as possible. Two means of rapid heating are plasma sintering and microwave sintering. Plasma sintering takes place in an ionized gas. Energetic ionized particles recombine and deposit large amounts of energy on the surfaces of the ceramic being sintered. Extremely high sintering rates have been achieved with this method. In microwave sintering, electromagnetic radiation at microwave frequencies can penetrate and deposit heat in the interior of a sintering ceramic, thus reversing the usual outside-in temperature gradient seen in conventional radiant heating. A combination of radiant and microwave heating can be used to obtain uniform heating throughout the piece. Unfortunately, neither plasma nor microwave sintering is amenable to complex shapes.

chemical bonding

Reaction sintering

      Reaction sintering, or reaction bonding, is an important means of producing dense covalent ceramics. Reaction-bonded silicon nitride (RBSN) is made from finely divided silicon powders that are formed to shape and subsequently reacted in a mixed nitrogen/hydrogen or nitrogen/helium atmosphere at 1,200° to 1,250° C (2,200° to 2,300° F). The nitrogen permeates the porous body and reacts with the silicon to form silicon nitride within the pores. The piece is then heated to 1,400° C (2,550° F), just below the melting point of silicon. Precise control is exercised over the nitrogen flow rate and the heating rate. The entire reaction-sintering process can last up to two weeks. Although up to 60 percent weight gain occurs during nitriding, dimensional change is less than 0.1 percent. This is a “net shape” process, which allows for excellent dimensional control and reduces the amount of costly machining and finishing needed after firing. Since no sintering aids are employed, the high-temperature strength and creep resistance of RBSN are quite good.

      Reaction-bonded silicon carbide (RBSC) is produced from a finely divided, intimate mixture of silicon carbide and carbon. Pieces formed from this mixture are exposed to liquid or vapour silicon at high temperature. The silicon reacts with the carbon to form additional silicon carbide, which bonds the original particles together. Silicon also fills any residual open pores. Like RBSN, RBSC undergoes little dimensional change during sintering. Products exhibit virtually constant strength as temperatures rise to the melting point of silicon.

Infiltration

      The siliconization of RBSC is a good example of infiltration, which may be described as any technique of filling in pores by reaction with or deposition from a liquid or vapour. In the case of liquid reaction, the technique is called melt infiltration; in the case of vapour phases, it is called chemical vapour infiltration, or CVI. With infiltration it is possible to begin with woven carbon fibres or felts, building up composite materials with enhanced properties.

The Lanxide process

      Another chemical bonding method is the Lanxide process, introduced by the Lanxide Company in the United States. In this process a molten metal is reacted with a gas to form a metal-ceramic composite at the metal-gas interface. As the composite grows at the metal-composite interface, edges remain in contact with the melt and act as a wick for additional reactant metal. The Lanxide process has been employed to produce complex shapes made from such ceramic-metal composites, or cermets, as boron carbide-boron, titanium nitride-titanium, and zirconium boride-zirconium.

Film deposition

      Advanced ceramics intended for electromagnetic and mechanical applications are often produced as thin or thick films. Thick films are commonly produced by paper-casting methods, described above, or by spin-coating. In spin-coating a suspension of ceramic particles is deposited on a rapidly rotating substrate, with centrifugal force distributing the particles evenly over the surface. On the other hand, truly thin films (that is, films less than one micrometre thick) can be produced by such advanced techniques as physical vapour deposition (PVD) and chemical vapour deposition (CVD). PVD methods include laser ablation, in which a high-energy laser blasts material from a target and through a vapour to a substrate, where the material is deposited. Another PVD approach involves sputtering, in which energetic electrons bombard the surface of a target, removing material as a vapour that is deposited on an adjacent substrate. CVD involves passing a carrier gas over a volatile organometallic precursor; the gas and organometallic react, producing a ceramic compound that is deposited downstream on an appropriate substrate.

      Even more precise control over the deposition of thin films can be achieved by molecular beam epitaxy, or MBE. In this technique molecular beams are directed at and react with other molecular beams at the substrate surface to produce atomic layer-by-layer deposition of the ceramic. Epitaxy (in which the crystallinity of the growing thin film matches that of the substrate) can often be achieved. Such films have potential for advanced electronic and photonic applications, including superconductivity.

Products

      The powder-forming, consolidation, and densification processes described in this article are employed in the manufacture of a multitude of advanced ceramic products. These products fall into two general categories: electromagnetic, encompassing all electric, magnetic, and optical applications; and structural, including all thermomechanical applications. For an overview of issues that are important in each of these categories, see the articles electroceramics and advanced structural ceramics. From those surveys, links are provided to articles on specific electroceramic and structural ceramic products.

Additional Reading

A good introduction to ceramics is provided by David W. Richerson, Modern Ceramic Engineering: Properties, Processing, and Use in Design, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded (1992). The processing of advanced ceramics is described in James S. Reed, Introduction to the Principles of Ceramic Processing (1988); I.J. McColm and N.J. Clark, Forming, Shaping, and Working of High Performance Ceramics (1988); George Y. Onoda, Jr., and Larry L. Hench, Ceramic Processing Before Firing (1978); and four sections of Theodore J. Reinhart (ed.), Engineered Materials Handbook, vol. 4, Ceramics and Glasses, ed. by Samuel J. Schneider (1991): “Ceramic Powders and Processing,” pp. 41–122; “Forming and Predensification, and Nontraditional Densification Processes,” pp. 123–241; “Firing/Sintering: Densification,” pp. 242–312; and “Final Shaping and Surface Finishing,” pp. 313–376.Thomas O. Mason

* * *