抄録
My work on ceramic technologies was started with clays as raw materials. Gradually, it has not only spread in the ceramic technologies but also focused on the kaolinitic clay science. My stand point is to understand the ceramic technologies from the clay science such as the deposition mechanism of kaolinitic sediment, effects of humus matters, exchangeable cations, the variety of crystallinity of kaolinites and so on. Moreover, water plays an important role in the fine particles (such as clay particles)-water system. My colleagues and I found that unfrozen water can coexist with frozen water even at liquid nitrogen temperature in the fine particle-water system, and succeeded to evaluate the unfrozen water quantitatively with DSC-measurement. We also succeeded to synthesize artificially platy kaolinite and α-Al2O3 powders with controlled atomic arrangement, crystallinity, aspect ratio and so on under hydrothermal conditions. In this paper, I will introduce four major results of our studies: 1) evaluation technologies of properties for clay and plastic materials, 2) synthesis technologies of both spherical and disordered kaolinites and platy α-Al2O3 powders, 3) proposition to the ceramic forming technology from the results obtained from studies on fine particle-water systems and 4) development of humidity controlled materials with controlling nano pore size and hardening by heating from natural resources such as kaolinite, allophane, imogolite, diatomaceous shale, gibbsite and other compounds.
