Improve your understanding in the most valuable aspects of advances in bioceramics and porous ceramics. This collection of logically organized and carefully selected articles contain the proceedings of the “Porous Ceramics: Novel Developments and Applications” and “Next Generation Bioceramics” symposia, which were held on January 27-February 1, 2008.

This proceedings issue contains a collection of 11 papers presented during the 33rd International Conference on Advanced Ceramics and Composites, January, 2009. Papers in this proceedings were presented from one of the three symposia listed below: Symposium 6 - Key Materials and Technologies for Efficient Direct Thermal-to-Electrical Conversion; Symposium 11 - Symposium on Advanced Dielectrics, Piezoelectric, Ferroelectric, and Multiferroic Materials; Focused Session 2 - Materials for Solid State Lighting.

The Armor Ceramics Symposium provides an annual forum for the presentation and discussion of unclassified information and ideas pertaining to the development and incorporation of ceramic materials for armor applications. This collection of articles from the seventh edition of this symposium focused on Impact, Penetration and Material Modeling, Material Concepts, Processes and Characterization, the Application of NDE, and Transparent Armor.

This volume contains twenty four papers with contributions on various aspects of solid oxide fuel cells that were discussed at the symposium. You will gain insight into the current status of solid oxide fuel cells technology and the latest developments in the areas of fabrication, characterization, testing, performance, electrodes, electrolytes, seals, cell and stack development, proton conductors, fuel reforming, mechanical behavior, powder synthesis, etc.

Provides a useful one-stop resource for understanding the most valuable aspects of ceramics in nuclear applications.

This volume is a useful resource for understanding the most valuable aspects of advanced ceramic coatings and interfaces. Containing twelve contributed papers from the symposium, topics include vibration damping coatings, thermal and environmental barrier coating processing, testing and life modeling, non-destructive evaluation, multifunctional coatings and interfaces, highlighting the state-of-the-art ceramic coatings technologies for various critical engineering applications.

This issue contains the proceedings of the “Porous Ceramics: Novel Developments and Applications” and “Next Generation Bioceramics” symposia, which were held on January 24-29, 2010 at the Hilton Daytona Beach Resort and the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida, USA. The interaction between ceramic materials and living organisms is a leading area of ceramics research. Novel bioceramic materials are being developed that will provide improvements in diagnosis and treatment of medical and dental conditions. In addition, bioinspired ceramics and biomimetic ceramics have generated considerable interest in the scientific community. The “Next Generation Bioceramics” symposium addressed several leading areas related to the development and use of novel bioceramics, including advanced processing of bioceramics; biomineralization and tissue-material interactions; bioinspired and biomimetic ceramics; ceramics for drug delivery; ceramic biosensors; in vitro and in vivo characterization of bioceramics; mechanical properties of bioceramics; and nanostructured bioceramics. The “Porous Ceramics” symposium aimed to bring together engineers and scientists in the area of ceramic materials containing high volume fractions of porosity, in which the porosity ranged from nano- to millimeters. These materials have attracted significant academic and industrial attention for use in environmental applications, an area where ceramics, particularly porous ones, play a key role because of their suitable properties. Therefore, a significant number of contributions, of which some are present in this volume, was devoted to the fabrication and characterization of porous ceramics for gas purification (e.g., H2 separation and CO2 separation) as well as to particulate filtration (e.g., diesel engine soot). A leading area of ceramics research involves the development of porous ceramics for medical, dental, and biotechnology applications. For example, porous ceramics are under development for use as bone substitutes because a porous structure may enhance tissue ingrowth. Therefore, tailoring of porosity to give specific characteristics, in terms of the amount of interconnecting cells and of the cell and cell window size is required. A joint session involving participants from bioceramics and porous ceramics symposia was therefore held in order to stimulate discussion and productive interactions between the two scientific communities.