Advanced Structural Ceramics II

Dear Colleagues,

Today, advanced structural ceramics have become essential commodities in many engineering (sub) disciplines, e.g., mechanical, automotive, aerospace, and biomedical engineering. This is the result of more than 40 years of research and development that has led to continuous improvement of the family of high-performance ceramic materials, including alumina, zirconia, silicon carbide, silicon nitride, tungsten carbide, etc., and composite ceramics containing metal or carbon nanofillers. Traditionally, the main focus has been on improving the mechanical and tribological properties to create and manufacture reliable ceramic components operating under harsh conditions, such as chemically aggressive, high-temperature and/or high load/stress bearing environments. At present, newer generations of advanced structural ceramics also featuring functional properties are attracting increasing attention, since these functional properties may be highly relevant for processing or final applications.

This Special Issue aims at collecting recent advances in structural ceramic materials from two main perspectives. The first one is the advanced materials engineering point of view, which focuses on the design, development and characterization of new structural ceramic materials. The second, but equally important one, is focused on the ceramic processing “value-chain” encompassing powder technology, dispersion, compounding, forming and shaping, drying or de-binding, sintering and machining.

We would like to encourage scientists from both fields to contribute with short communications, full articles, and reviews to this Special Issue. The topics to be addressed are, e.g.:

• Development of new structural ceramic materials such as:
• Oxides (alumina, zirconia, etc.);
• Non-oxides (silicon carbide, silicon nitride, tungsten carbide, etc.);
• Composites with oxide or non-oxide matrix and micro- or nanoscale dispersions (metals, hard phases, graphene, carbon nanotubes).
• Characterization (microstructure, phase composition, mechanical properties at ambient and high temperature, fracture mechanics).
• Processing of ceramics:
• Powder technology;
• Dispersion and rheology;
• Compounding of feedstocks;
• Shaping of components (conventional and additive);
• Sintering (conventional, pressure assisted, SPS, flash);
• Machining (green machining, final machining, non-conventional machining).
• Applications of structural ceramic materials.

Prof. Dr. Frank Kern
Dr. Andraz Kocjan
Dr. Ángela Gallardo-López
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Ceramics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.