CMCs – What’s the Big Deal?

Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMCs) have been at the top of the industry’s agenda for a number of years. At Ceramics Expo, this important subject has been covered in our past events and we are excited to be enabling further technological developments through leading the discussion again at our 2022 event. But, what makes this such a hot topic within the ceramic’s community?

Advantages of CMCs

Whilst ceramics are generally known for their brittleness and defect risks, CMCs are made of ceramic fibers embedded within a ceramic matrix structure, with these fibers reinforcing the structure and improving strength and wear.

In addition to improving strength and wear, the advantage of using this material is that CMCs are generally very good at withstanding high temperatures and corrosion, are light weight and have a high chemical stability. This makes them ideal for high performance applications which have high thermal and mechanical requirements.

Growing Applications

CMCs are already making headway in the aerospace, automotive and energy sectors due to the their optimal properties (namely weight reduction, strength, thermal resistance).

Growing applications which will enable further expansion of into other sectors include:

• Biomedical: CMCs can be used for biomedical applications. This includes ball heads for orthopedic devices, hip prostheses, dental implants to name a few.
• Electronic devices: CMCs could play an integral role for applications in electronic devices, with increasing thermal management requirements increasing alongside the miniaturization of these technologies.
• Tools: CMCs can be used in the tooling sector, as their strength and hardiness makes them ideal for cutting other materials.

The Bottleneck

Despite the copious current and future applications for CMCs, the greatest bottleneck that remains is commercialization; getting the scale of production up, and the cost down. This is something which can be realized through factors such as:

• Increased funding, private or institutional
• New, cost-effective manufacturing techniques (3D printing is a developing area which may benefit this technology)
• New applications which will drive the demand and therefore efforts into developing the technology for wider uptake

How can we address this?

At Ceramics Expo 2022, this very question will be discussed in the panel session Roadmap to Scale-Up Success: Effective Solutions for the Continued Development of Ceramic Matrix Composites (Tuesday 30^th August, 10AM). Expert speakers from leading companies including Lockheed Martin, General Electric Aviation and Free Form Fibers (and more) will be detailing how they think this challenge should be addressed in this innovative and thought-leadership panel.

If you are interested in hearing from leading industry speakers on this and many other innovative topics, our free-to-attend, jam -packed conference program will be taking place alongside North America’s leading technical ceramics exhibition from August 30-31. Register here, today.