Ceramics

Abstract

Ceramics have various definitions, because of their long history of development as one of the oldest and most versatile groups of materials and because of the different ways in which materials can be classified, such as by chemical composition (silicates, oxides and nonoxides), properties (mechanical and physical), or applications (building materials, high-temperature materials and functional materials). The most widely used, minimal definition of ceramics is that they are inorganic nonmetallic materials. In the present section we differentiate between traditional ceramics and cements, silicate ceramics, refractory ceramics, oxide ceramics, and nonoxide ceramics, being aware that there are overlaps. It should also be noted that other chapters of this Handbook cover particular groups of ceramics: glasses (Chap. 19 ), semiconductors (Chap. 20 ), nonmetallic superconductors (Chap. 21 ), magnetic oxides (Chap. 22 ), dielectrics and electrooptics (Chap. 23 ) and ferroelectrics (Chap. 24 ) and related materials.