Читать книгу Transparent Ceramics - Adrian Goldstein - Страница 14

People are interested in transparent ceramics mostly owing to practical applications of various such products. Some of them exhibit a “large” volume, like lamp envelopes used in public road illumination, phosphors for solid-state lighting sources, or artificial gems. Others are remarkable, owing to their destined high-tech applications, like in outer space-stationed lasers for solar energy harvesting, gain media for laser wake-field charged particle accelerators [B34] or sparkless car engine igniters [T3]. Yet others are impressing owing to the sophisticated technology required for their fabrication, like in the case of the anisotropic derived ceramics gain media (particle orientation under strong magnetic fields [S11]), transparent polycrystalline c-boron nitride and diamond (GPa-range hot pressing [I13, T20]), or solid-state transformation of polycrystalline material into single crystals [I3].

In this section we will briefly discuss the main factors (technical and economical) that determine the worth of transparent ceramics.