Ceramics articles from across Nature Portfolio

Hypersonic vehicles experience extreme temperatures, high heat fluxes, and aggressive oxidizing environments. Here, the authors highlight key materials design principles for critical vehicle areas and strategies for advancing laboratory-scale materials to flight-ready components.

Strong bulk van der Waals materials are fabricated by the compressive moulding of two-dimensional nanosheets near room temperature through water-mediated densification, providing an energy-efficient way for synthesizing various van der Waals materials and a potential for tailoring compositions.

Finding a competitor for diamond as a good heat conductor remains challenging. Measurements on crystals of cubic boron nitride demonstrate a thermal conductivity of 1,600 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹ at room temperature, rivalling diamond.

Georg Bednorz, together with Karl Alexander Müller, discovered high-temperature superconductivity (HTS) in ceramics, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987. Christine Horejs talks to Georg Bednorz about the successes and challenges of his research on HTS, applications of HTS materials, and the key ingredients for scientific discoveries.

A crystal structure with one-dimensional order is identified in oxide ceramics, which is distinguished from the well-known categories of solid structures and potentially provides unexpected properties.

Humankind's aerospace aspirations are placing unprecedented demands on vehicle propulsion systems. Advanced structural ceramics are playing a key role in addressing these challenges.