Accelerated physical and chemical transformations in ceramics processing

Abstract

© 2019 Serbian Chemical Society. All rights reserved. From economic and environmental points of view, solid phase chemical reactions are very important parts of modern chemistry and technology, enabling various processes to become cleaner, safer and easier to perform. This survey presents the basic concepts of solid-state transformations in ceramics processing, including notions and phenomena described in capital books on silicate chemistry, published more than 100 years ago, to the present day. During this period, scientists and practitioners in the field of ceramics processing used concepts related to the acceleration of phase transitions and chemical reactions. Today, the differences between various accelerating agents (flux agents, mineralizers and catalysts) in terms of their composition and mechanism of action are almost completely defined and clearly delimited. However, in ceramics processing, a more general term additive is preferably used instead of the previously mentioned ones. The aim of this work is to show that all accelerating agents are equally important to researchers in the field of catalysis and material science, emphasizing that the used terminology could be interpreted from different perspectives.