Structure Property Relationships In Surface Modified Ceramics Nato Advanced Science Institutes Series E Applied Sciences

The use of ion beams for the modification of the structure and properties of the near-surface region of ceramics began in earnest in the early 1980s. Since the mechanical properties of such materials are dominated by surface flaws and the surface stress state, the use of surface modification techniques would appear to be an obvious application. As is often the case in research and development, most of the initial studies can be characterized as cataloging the response of various ceramic materials to a range of ion beam treatments. The systematic study of material and ion beam parameters is well underway and we are now designing experiments to provide specific information about the processing parameter - property relationships. The first group of lectures dealt structure-property with the fundamentals of ion-solid interactions and the defect structure of compounds. Chemical and thermodynamic factors appear to be significantly more important than for simple metallic systems. The second group of lectures concerned the experimentally observed microstructural features and phase structures that develop during ion-beam processing of ceramics. The properties of ion-implanted and ion-beam-mixed ceramics were treated in Part III, and included discussions on mechanical, tribological, chemical, electrical, and optical properties. The final section was concerned with thin films and coatings prepared by ion-beam-assisted processes. Symposia.