In December 2013, European Space Agency ESA launched the Gaia satellite, that had to map the location and speed of about one billion stars over five years. Gaia is so accurate that it can detect a human hair – with a thickness of a few dozen microns – at a distance of about 1000 kilometers. […]
From a chemical point of view, advanced ceramics – like traditional ceramics – consist of compounds between metallic and non-metallic elements: oxides such as aluminium oxide and zirconium oxide, nitrides such as silicon nitride and titanium nitride, and carbides such as silicon carbide. The advanced ceramics family can be described as stable and functional materials. […]
The ceramic material aluminium oxide, also known as alumina, is completely opaque, translucent or transparent – depending on the structure, and therefore on the manufacturing process. Light scattering is the keyword here. Most alumina products are made out of pure aluminium oxide powder with a well defined grain size. These powder particles are getting close(r) […]
Clay is the most important raw material for traditional ceramics such as bricks, tiles, sanitary ceramics and tableware. The word ‘earthenware’ for ceramic pots and jugs is an indication that their raw materials are literally obtained from the ground. Clay is a natural product whose composition varies. Clay particles are flat hexagonal plates with a […]
On April 30, 2015 – formerly known as the Queen’s Birthday – the Dutch Ceramic Society NKV organised a meeting in the city of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Part of this meeting was ‘Research in advanced ceramics’, where a total of six PhD and MSc students of Dutch universities took the opportunity to present their […]
Computer simulations on an atomic or molecular scale give a direct link between the microscopic details of a system (atomic masses, molecular geometry, etc.) on the one hand, and macroscopic properties that are of experimental interest (energies, transport coefficients etc.) on the other. By comparing the outcome of the simulation with experimental results, understanding can […]
Piezoelectric materials have the capability to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy, and vice versa. Piezo stems from the ancient Greek πιέζειν (piezein), which means ‘to press’ or ‘to squeeze’. Piezoelectric materials are among these ‘invisible’ materials that are widespread around us, although they are unknown to the public at large. Mobile phones, automotive electronics, […]
