Faculty of Materials Engineering Department of Materials Technology

Ceramic Materials Laboratory and Thermal Analysis

1. Name of laboratory: Ceramic Materials Laboratory and Thermal Analysis

The Ceramic Material Laboratory is manufacturing and researching a wide spectrum of ceramic powders and materials obtained via ceramic’s technologies. We obtains, manufactures and researches both traditional and advanced ceramic materials or composites. Most of conducted works are associated with nitride-based and oxynitride-based ceramics for automotive, tool industry, civil engineering and optoelectronics. Our lab conducts research around environmental protection by processing ceramic wastes which are challenging for recycle. We also work at ceramic powders for 3D printing technology.

We have technologies for manufacturing powders, plastic clays and ceramic slurries. Also, our lab can treat powders at both, traditional and high energy ball-mills. We have wide spectrum of furnaces working in air conditions and protective atmospheres. Available are furnaces for specific applications such as graphite furnace (up to 2200°C) or rotating tube furnace for granulates sintering.

Our research equipment includes devised for structural and optical analysis. We can characterize grain size distribution in range from 10 nm to 3 mm. The crystal structure with XRD technique is possible for both powders and solid samples. In our lab we can conduct research of emission/excitation spectra in UV-VIS-NIR range.

2. Research offer and scope of services (research opportunities)
   1. Mass preparation technologies: ball and drum mills, attritor mills, high-energy planetary mills (up to 100G), cross-hammer mills, mechanical and sonic homogenizers, granulators, mixers, lyophilization method, a station (glove chamber with a sluice) for preparation powders in protective atmospheres, etc.
   2. Molding technologies: laboratory and semi-industrial uniaxial presses up to 50 tons of pressure, classic techniques of slip casting, casting for non-porous molds, tape-casting, low-pressure injection into non-porous forms, etc.
   3. . Sintering technologies: laboratory chamber furnaces for operation in air atmosphere and in controlled protective atmospheres up to 1750 ° C, tube furnaces for operation in air and protective gases at atmospheric pressure up to 1600 ° C, graphite chamber furnace for operation in protective atmospheres at atmospheric pressure up to 2250 ° C, semi-industrial rotary tube furnace for sintering granules in air / protective atmospheres at temperatures up to 1200 ° C, f 150mm, D 3000mm, column for producing optical fibers.
   4. Research technologies: for basic tests of powders / ceramic products, hardness testers, cutters, flowmeters, density meters, viscometers, grain size analyzers, laser diffraction method in suspensions, phase composition analyzers (XRD method), analyzers for oxygen and nitrogen content in solid samples and powder coatings, stands for testing optical properties in the field of UV-VIS-NIR, spectrometers, spectrofluorometer for testing also at elevated temperatures, a stand for testing magnetic properties, ultrasonic flaw detection.

3. Person responsible for Laboratory (contact details)
   Associate Professor Grzegorz Moskal PhD, DSc
   e-mail: Grzegorz.Moskal@polsl.pl
   tel.: +48 32 6034437,
   mobile: 606 211 352