What is the difference between traditional and advanced ceramic?

Many people might think advanced ceramic, as the name indicates, has some kinds of relationship with traditional ceramic. However, they do not have much similarity. Advanced ceramic also has little connection with pottery or chinaware as the traditional ceramic does. It is a newly developed high-tech material that benefits our daily lives in a broad range of aspects. Why are advanced ceramic fiber so crucial to us? What are the differences between traditional ceramics and advanced ceramics? Answers to these questions will be given in the following sections.

-        What is traditional ceramic?

-        What is advanced ceramic?

-        Differences between traditional ceramic and advanced ceramic

What is traditional ceramic?

The history of traditional ceramic is almost as old as human beings, which can be traced back to more than 10000 years ago. Traditional ceramic is a kind of ceramic material which is extracted from commonly seen natural raw materials, such as clay minerals and silica sand. They are generally made up of three basic components: clay, silica and feldspar. After centuries of practice in manufacturing processes, these materials are found able to be made into many products that we are familiar with, such as porcelain tableware tiles, refractory linings and Portland cement. Among the raw materials that are used to produce ceramics, clay is the most commonly seen one. Clay is popularly utilized because it is found directly in nature and is easy to form. Therefore, it is frequently used in structural clay products and white utensils such as tiles, pottery and porcelain. Most of the clay products also have cheap fillers (usually quartz) and feldspar that form glass during heat treatment to bond ceramic grains.

What is advanced ceramic?

Advanced ceramics are also called as technical ceramics or engineering ceramics, which indicates they are frequently engaged in high-tech manufacturing process. Therefore, advanced ceramics usually have excellent properties in order to meet the high-performance requirements of their applications. The characteristics that advanced ceramics often have include high strength, good flexibility, good insulating power, abrasion resistance, thermal resistance, corrosion resistance and biocompatibility. 

Differences between traditional ceramic and advanced ceramic

Advanced ceramics are largely different from traditional ceramics with respect to their compositions, manufacturing methods and properties.

In terms of compositions, traditional ceramic’s material depends greatly upon the composition of the clay that it used. Thus, the composition can be quite different due to diverse origins. However, advanced ceramic fiber is a kind of composites whose composition mainly includes some oxides.

When it comes to manufacturing process, advanced ceramic often adopts dry pressing, injection molding, vapor deposition and so on, which results in uniform density distribution in the structures of advanced ceramics.

When referring to their performance, advanced ceramic fiber generally has more outstanding characteristics and better performance.

In summary, traditional ceramics is a familiar material that serves our lives while advanced ceramic fiber is able to enhance our lives continuously and enormously. Advanced ceramic, as it requires higher technology, plays an important role in a wide range of fields, such as electronics, telecommunications, manufacturing, transportation, medicine, national defense and space exploration.