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You can't make it without materials, and you can't make materials without processing. This phrase holds for all material classes, and particularly for ceramics.

Research and development in the field of ceramics involves researchers from various fields, e.g. materials scientists, chemists, physicists, electrical and mechanical engineers. Beyond different fields, researchers are of very different education and career background, e.g. Bachelor/Master students, technicians, laboratory assistants, PhD students and Postdocs. Generations are changing, the experienced one retiring and the new ones facing old problems without necessarily having access to the knowledge accumulated over decades.

To date, there are a few very helpful textbooks on processing of ceramics. Beyond textbooks and scientific papers, very little references elaborate the practical side of ceramic materials science. What are the important aspects of powder processing? How do I mix and mill raw materials? How do I shape a ceramic green body? How do I select the right sintering method? What are the guidelines to design a heat treatment for sintering? How do I polish my sample?

Platforms as wikiHow and many others provide tutorials on a very large number of subjects: how to cook rice or make macaroni salad, compress a pdf file, preserve flowers or step out of your comfort zone… But we all still miss a general cooking book for ceramics!

This new Wiki, initiated by Wolfgang Rheinheimer and Olivier Guillon (both at the Institute of Energy and Climate Research - Materials Synthesis and Processing (IEK-1), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany) provides such a platform. A list of mostly practical articles helps anybody working on ceramics to set up his lab work. Staff members at IEK-1 have provided a core of articles open to everyone, which simply needs to be expanded. You are welcome to read and extend these articles and to create new ones for the benefit of the current and future ceramic community!

Please find the Wiki here: https://apps.fz-juelich.de/ceramics

How to contribute?

To request an account to contribute to the ceramics Wiki, click on the link labelled "Request account" on the top right of the web page. Follow the instruction and enter your desired user name, your email address and your real name. After that you will receive a message to verify your email address. Click on the link provided in the email. When this is done our staff will check your request. Upon approval, you will receive an additional email with a one-time password and further instructions on how to log in. On your first login the system will ask you to enter a new password. After that you can edit pages in the ceramics Wiki.

Olivier Guillon has been a director at the Institute of Energy and Climate Research— Materials Synthesis and Processing (IEK-1, Forschungszentrum Jülich), Germany, and a professor at the RWTH Aachen University, Germany, since 2014. His research focuses on solid-state batteries, solid oxide fuel cells and high-temperature electrolysis, gas separation membranes, high-temperature materials, as well as advanced sintering processes. He is a member of the board of directors of the German Ceramic Society (DKG), World Academy of Ceramics, the International Institute for the Science of Sintering and fellow of the European Ceramic Society. Guillon can be reached by email at o.guillon@fz-juelich.de

Wolfgang Rheinheimer has been leading an Emmy-Noether Group funded by the German Research Foundation since 2020. He received his Diploma and PhD at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. He completed postdoctoral research at KIT, and was a visiting professor at Purdue University. His research focuses on microstructure evolution in ionic materials, and the segregation and processing aspects during sintering and grain growth and the resulting functional properties. Rheinheimer can be reached by email at w.rheinheimer@fz-juelich.de