Abstract
Ceramics have been closely connected with thermal analysis since the first application of DTA was done to the analysis of clay minerals by Lechatelier.
In this paper, first the relationship between ceramics processing and thermal analysis, and application of thermal analysis for traditional ceramics were described. In comparing XRD with thermal analysis, the characterization of some ceramics such as glasses, amorphous materials, absorption phenomena, impurity analysis, complex clays, etc, was considerably difficult with XRD, but thermal analysis seems to be useful in these fields. And the important roles of XRD, SEM and thermal analysis were discussed in ceramics.
A few examples of the actual application for ceramics were shown. e.g., the application for the controll of ceramic manufacturing processes, the analysis of the ceramic raw materials under the high gases pressures, the sintering process by High temperature Isostatic Pressing (HIP), etc.
It is claimed in this paper that the systematic application of thermal analysis to ceramics, especialy to characterization techniques, is very important and should be established.
