Ceramic Joining to dissimilar materials

Dr Blugan completed his PhD on the Effect of sintering additives on the high temperature creep properties of silicon nitride ceramics at Queen Mary College, University of London. He then worked for three years at Morgan Advanced Ceramics at Rugby, UK working on the processing, manufacturing and application of high performance alumina and zirconia ceramics. Since 2001 he has been working at Empa's Laboratory for High Performance Ceramics.

Since 2019 he is Group Leader and his key research areas are advanced manufacturing techniques, mechanical and microstructural characterization for ceramics for energy conversion and storage, biomedical applications and joining of ceramics to dissimilar materials. He is working mostly in applied industrial research and has over 100 articles.

Abstract

Joining of ceramics is an important aspect in the shaping and the production of complex components. Joining of ceramic to ceramic or to metal can be achieved by a number of techniques including glass sealing, active brazing, adhesives as well as new processes such as SPS, diffusion bonding, etc.

Joining of ceramics requires overcoming a number of challenges including wetting of ceramics, chemical bonding and minimizing the differences in thermal and physical properties of the different materials. In the last years we have worked on joining by these and other different techniques for several different applications including for batteries, space vehicles, and sensors. For the future, we are investigating new techniques including laser joining of ceramics. The presentation will show a range of application based joining results from our group.