Frontiers in Ceramic Science

Nowadays, researchers concentrated on the advancements of new types of precision actuators to satisfy the increasing demand for high precision positioning technology. Owing to fast response, high precision, and compact structure, the piezoelectric actuators attracted much attention. In the advancement of science and technology, the ceramics play a vital role. In this chapter, we mainly focussed on applications of piezoelectric actuators in different fields such as nano metrology, and industries. Even, the different advanced ceramics for piezoelectric actuators were discussed.

In recent years, research is going on to introduce new types of electrode materials to satisfy the increasing demands for efficient energy storage devices. Among various energy storage devices, the supercapacitors gained a lot of attention owing to their long cyclic life, environment-friendly nature and high-power density. In this view, global research has been reported to this rapid development of fundamental and applied aspects of supercapacitors. In this chapter, we have given a brief description of different ceramic electrode materials along with their fabrication techniques for supercapacitor applications.

In this chapter, we have reviewed the advanced ceramics which are used for the refrigeration or cooling process. The refrigeration process is carried out using the magnetocaloric effect, i.e., the variation of specific heat and thermal energy as a function of temperature and magnetic field. The ceramics of magnetite and rare earth alloys of magnetic composites are briefly discussed.

In the future, a lot of problems can be faced in energy management due to the heavy consumption of renewable and non-renewable energy sources. This is because of the ever-growing population and huge usage of electronic appliances in modern life. Therefore, people are looking into different fields to increase energy demand. In this chapter, the role of advanced ceramics and their applications of thermoelectric technology were discussed. Also, an attempt was made to study different advanced ceramic materials that are used for thermoelectric power generation in recent years.

In the present world, electromagnetic radiation pollution has become a problematic issue in order to run electronic equipment as well. At this juncture, the necessity of absorbing the electromagnetic radiation emerged as a significant task. Thus, the advanced ceramic materials for microwave absorption property were developed. In the current chapter, the discussion on the effect of electromagnetic radiation on electronic goods, human health and defense system was elaborated. Furthermore, various ceramic materials were introduced for reducing the electromagnetic radiation pollution thereby microwave absorption process. Moreover, in order to evaluate the microwave absorption property of ceramics, we extracted the parameters like magnetic loss and dielectric loss for each ceramic material. Subsequently, the applications of microwave absorbers in various fields were elucidated.

Advanced ceramics are substances that are used for the preparation of ceramic materials with special properties. They are also called fine, engineering, high performance, high tech or technical ceramics. Traditionally, ceramics are known to be inorganic, non-metallic solids made of materials being powdered and then fabricated into material by applying heat which exhibit strength, hardness brittleness and low electrical conductivity. This chapter mainly deals with different types of advanced ceramics, their characteristics and their environmental applications.

The electromagnetic (EM) interference is one of the major issues in EM wave applications. To prevent electronic devices from the EM wave interference, there is a need to find novel materials for shielding the EM wave interference. In this chapter, we discussed the EM wave interference and the effective EM interference parameters to find the strength of shielding. The chapter contains the mechanism and some derived materials reported by the various scientists. The materials are classified as ferrites, composites, and carbon-based materials. Herein, some other interesting materials like ferrites and conducting polymer composites were discussed to shield the EM interference.

The presence of intrinsic polarizations into the ferroelectric materials helps them to get polarized easily on the application of the electric field. The presence of the retentivity and the coercivity formed a hysteresis loop pattern when the field is applied to the materials. But some artifacts make the nature of such a hysteresis loop distorted for the ferroelectric materials. In general, the non-centrosymmetric nature of the crystal structure responsible for the ferroelectric nature of the materials. That is why the presence of the intrinsic polarization in the electrets does not make it a ferroelectric class of materials. Actually, the ferroelectrics come under the dielectric class of materials. The present-day application of the ferroelectric materials ranges from the ferroelectric memory devices, electro caloric devices, magneto electric devices, DRAM capacitors, etc. The flexible properties along with the high writing speed and cyclability make Bi3.25La0.75Ti3O12 as one of the most promising materials for FERAM applications. The large ECE values of the Barium hafnium titanate makes it very useful for the electro caloric cooling of the microelectronics devices. The presence of both spin glass state as well as the ferroelectricity make advanced ceramics like La3Ni2NbO9 couple both magnetic and electric field within the same material for the fabrication of the magneto-electric devices. The presence of a morphotropic phase boundary in the advanced ceramics of hafnium oxide and zirconium oxide can result in a high dielectric constant for the DRAM applications.

Research related to amorphous semiconductors in thin films has gained tremendous significance due to their applications in potential areas. Lead vanadate that belongs to the category of semiconducting oxide glasses has been studied to the extent of consideration. Apart from their application point of view, it is necessary to understand the physical properties of these materials. Taking into consideration wide variation in material composition, it is evident that large scope prevails in terms of research. Many laboratories were carrying extensive research on binary, tertiary mixed metal oxide glasses along with their derivatives/substitution of other metal oxides or transition of rare earth metal oxides was identified to suit for glass system showing considerable variation in physical properties if substituted for different applications. A review on these glass systems has been reported in this paper in particular transport properties of semiconducting glasses.

Additive method is employed for 3D printing ceramic materials over a subtractive conventional method with the help of computer-aided design [CAD]. The different feedstocks are used to print ceramic materials such as slurry, powder and bulk solid. Alumina powder is the most common material and excellent oxide used as a catalyst, adsorbent, aerospace material and microelectronics material. With the help of stereolithography technique, glass ceramics and active glass can be printed.

Bio ceramics are being prepared by advanced 3D printing technology which is a very good economical technique. Different inorganic materials can be used to print bio ceramics for different applications such as alumina, zirconia, Leucite, lithium disilicate and mica-based ceramics. The main implications of bio ceramics are in dentistry and orthopedics.

In this chapter, we specified the origin of ceramics, historical background along with advantagesof the ceramic materials. Meanwhile, the classification of ceramics was also mentioned in a detailed manner. With special interest, we focussed on the antimicrobial applications of advanced ceramics followed by detailed and tabulated data.