Types of ceramics

Traditional ceramics

Bricks, pottery, glass, porcelain, tiles, cement, and concrete are our classic, time-tested ceramics. Although they all have different uses, we can still think of them as general-purpose materials. Take tiles, for example. We can put them inside our homes or outside; on the walls, the floors, or the roof; and we can stick glass in our windows or poke away at it on our smartphone screens—we can even drink champagne out of it. Ceramics like this are ancient materials—ones our ancestors would recognize—that have gradually found more and more uses as the centuries have worn on.

Advanced engineering ceramics

By contrast, advanced ceramics are ones that have been engineered (mostly since the early 20th century) for highly specific applications. For example, silicon nitrides and tungsten carbides are designed for making exceptionally hard, high-performance cutting tools—though they do have other uses as well. Most modern engineered ceramics are metal oxides, carbides, and nitrides, which means they're compounds made by combining atoms of a metal with oxygen, carbon, or nitrogen atoms. So, for example, we have tungsten carbide, silicon carbide, and boron nitride, which are hard, cutting-tool ceramics; aluminum oxide (alumina) and silicon dioxide are used in making integrated circuits ("microchips"); and lithium-silicon oxide is used to make the heat-protective nose cones on space rockets.