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ceramic composition and properties
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Diagram showing three common metallic crystal structures: body-centred cubic with one atom at the center, face-centred cubic with atoms at each face and corner, and hexagonal close-packed with layers of atoms forming a hexagonal pattern. Figure 2A: The arrangement of magnesium and oxygen ions in magnesia (MgO); an example of the rock salt crystal structure. Figure 2B: The arrangement of uranium and oxygen ions in urania (UO2); an example of the fluorite crystal structure. Figure 2C: The arrangement of titanium, barium, and oxygen ions in barium titanate (BaTiO3); an example of the perovskite crystal structure. Figure 2D: The arrangement of copper, yttrium, oxygen, and barium ions in yttrium barium copper oxide (YBa2Cu3O7); an example of a superconducting ceramic crystal structure. Figure 3: Barriers to slip in ceramic crystal structures. Beginning with the rock salt structure of magnesia (MgO; shown at left), in which there is a stable balance of positive and negative charges, two possible crystallographic planes show the difficulty of establishing stable imperfections. The (111) plane (shown at top) would contain atoms of identical charge; inserted as an imperfection into the crystal structure, such an imbalanced distribution of charges would not be able to establish a stable bond. The (100) plane (shown at bottom) would show a balance between positive and negative charges, but a shear stress applied along the middle of the plane would force identically charged atoms into proximity—again creating a condition unfavourable for stable bonding.
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Diagram showing three common metallic crystal structures: body-centred cubic with one atom at the center, face-centred cubic with atoms at each face and corner, and hexagonal close-packed with layers of atoms forming a hexagonal pattern.
Atoms in metals commonly are packed in one of three simple forms Three common metallic crystal structures.

ceramic composition and properties

materials science
Written by
Thomas O. Mason
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Coeditor of Symposium on Point Defects and Related Properties of Ceramics and others.
Thomas O. Mason
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ceramic composition and properties, atomic and molecular nature of ceramic materials and their resulting characteristics and performance in industrial applications. Industrial ceramics are commonly understood to be all industrially used materials that are inorganic, nonmetallic solids. Usually they are metal oxides (that is, compounds of metallic elements and oxygen), but many ceramics (especially advanced ceramics) are compounds of metallic elements and carbon, nitrogen, or sulfur. In atomic structure they are most often crystalline, although they...

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