Chilling Out: Ceramic Technologies from Natural Examples

(The Wilkins Ice Shelf. Source: twilightearth.com)

Sometimes the materials science industry can take a cue from mother nature and discover something that was previously untapped, yet right in front of our faces. A few years back, a group of scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory used mother-of-pearl as a model for the creation of advanced ceramic materials. Mother-of-pearl, or "Nacre", is a naturally-occurring ceramic that is mostly found as reinforcement in mollusk shells. The team at Berkeley devised a way to emulate the structure of Nacre using the process of water freezing as a guide. An article from Chemical and Engineering News describes their process:

"The researchers knew that when saltwater freezes, it can form tiny plates of ice. Impurities in the water are squeezed out as the plates form and become trapped in the spaces between them. [The group at Berkeley] exploits this behavior using concentrated suspensions of ceramic particles in water. As the water freezes, it pushes the ceramic particles into the layers between the ice plates. The rate of freezing determines the thickness of the resulting ceramic layers, which can range from 1 to 200 µm."

The ice is then removed by the process of freeze-drying, leaving a ceramic scaffold behind with ice plate-shaped pores. After stabilization, the pores can be filled with a secondary compound (examples in the article include epoxy and aluminum alloy, but there are several options). John Halloran, a materials scientist at the University of Michigan described the results of the project as displaying "remarkably improved mechanical properties" compared to standard ceramics developed from today's processes. This discovery has several applications, including the possibility of devising bone substitutes that are four times stronger than the current industry standard.

To read the full article from Chemical and Engineering News, follow the link:

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i05/8405notw3.html

To learn more about porous ceramics applications, check out Refractron:

http://www.refractron.com/porous_ceramics.asp

The BBC Projects Big Things for North American Ceramics Market

(Image courtesy of BBC Research)

BBC has released a new technical market research report which suggests that by 2014, the North American high-performance ceramic coatings market will be worth an estimated $2 billion dollars, up from $1.4 billion in 2009. An article on the report from AZO Materials divides the market into segments, and then gives a rundown of how each segment is performing, along with an estimate on how these segments will continue to grow over the next three and a half years. The largest segment was identified as thermal spray coatings, which was worth an estimated $953 million in 2009, but is expected to reach $1.4 billion by 2014 (to put that into perspective, that is the entire market value of all segments in 2009). Of the second-largest segment, AZO had this to say:

"The second-largest segment, chemical vapor deposition, is estimated at $183 million in 2009, down from $213 million in 2008. It is expected, however, to increase by a 5-year CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 3.8% to reach nearly $221 million in 2014. The physical vapor deposition segment (for comparison) is projected to have a 5-year CAGR of 7.4%, rising from $187 million in 2009 to nearly $267 million in 2014.

What this illustrates is that even segments of the market that were previously failing are picking up steam and should begin and continue to grow over the next five years. So, why the sudden boom in the ceramics manufacturing industry? New developments in materials science (Including innovations like DiaCer, see previous posts) and the invention of new processes with which to develop them have been emerging from the woodwork over the last few years. High-performance ceramic coatings is one of the few industries today that has been able to use innovation to overcome an otherwise bleak economical environment. Over the next three and a half years, those in the ceramics and materials science field can expect a lot of opportunities for continued growth and expansion.

To read the article from BBS, follow this link:

http://www.bccresearch.com/report/AVM015E.html

To read AZO Materials' take on it, click this one:

http://www.azom.com/news.asp?NewsID=21258

China Begins New Export Restrictions on Rare Earth Deposits

(Graphic courtesy of "Rare Earth Elements--Critical Resources for High Technology," Gordon B. Haxel et al., U.S. Geological Survey, November 2002)

If you're in the ceramics manufacturing industry (and if you're not, I wonder what you come to this blog for, hopefully for my charming writing style) then you are aware that rare earth metals are instrumental in many advanced materials processes. Businessweek has recently predicted in an article that a resource dispute between China and the United States may be fast approaching. As is depicted by the graph above, in recent years China has been climbing the rankings of the nations with the most rare earth elements, and now that they are on par with and surpassing the United States, they have a very large bargaining chip when it comes to these deposits of rare elements.

China has opted to cut export quotas by 72 percent in the second half of 2010. This means that it's likely that the US will have a shortage of rare earth elements in the coming months, which could be potentially disastrous to our industry, and possibly the world economy as a whole. What this means for local ceramics manufacturers is that they'll need to modify their budgets to accommodate the extra prices on importation of these rare elements. According to an article on these new developments by Ceramic Tech Today "China's Ministry of Commerce says shipments for the second half of 2010 will be limited to 7,976 metric tons, less than half of the amount shipped in the first half of the year (16,304 metric tons)."

With all of the recent technological developments in ceramics and materials science, this news could not have come at a worse time. With the United States' economy not in tip-top shape and effecting the rest of the world, the limited resources of each country are becoming more and more important to global markets. The dispute that might occur could have far-reaching consequences throughout the entire world, and ceramics manufacturers everywhere should begin to consider re-estimating their costs and estimated production values.

Materials Science Schools Make BusinessWeek's Best Bargains List...

The Georgia Tech (which made number 2 in the list of twenty-five) logo featuring their mascot, Buzz

There's a lot of buzz (pun intended) regarding materials science schools as they relate to the amount a student invests into his or her higher education career versus what they get out of it after education. When highschool students are looking at where they want to go to begin their college career, one of the most influential statistics can be how big of a bargain the school is. No one wants to put a bunch of money into their education only to find out that their chosen field doesn't have the big pay-out they were expecting. For this reason, going to school for materials science may be one of the wisest investments a freshman in college can make.

An article from The American Ceramic Society sums up the information from the original BusinessWeek article as follows:

"The source data come from PayScale, a salary comparison and benchmarking service. Using this information, BusinessWeek calculated a 30-year net return on investment for more than 500 colleges and universities. According to the publication, these schools "boast a 30-year net return on investment that ranges from about $600,000 to more than $1.1 million, an improvement of 56 percent to 187 percent over the average for the entire sample. All of them sport decent graduation rates, too - in most cases, well above the 58 percent average."

With a potential overall return of more than a million dollars over the course of thirty years, it is evident that materials science is an industry that is rapidly growing. If you have a student looking to go into a science or engineering field, but they're not entirely certain what they want to do with their lives, you should probably mention the large amounts of money that people in the field are currently making. If you yourself are considering going back to school, or going for the first time, there is a lot to be said for the materials sciences, most notably the big payout.

To read the original BusinessWeek article, click the link:

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/06/0628_payscale2/index.htm

To learn more about the interesting world of Materials Science, check out Refractron:

www.refractron.com