Structure of Ceramics: Materials Science Fundamentals

Ceramic materials power batteries, microchips, and sensors, and their performance traces back to atomic-scale structure. This course connects crystal structure, defect chemistry, and transport into one framework you can apply to real materials. You'll start with close-packed lattices and the rules that explain why ionic crystals form specific structures. From there, you'll use Kröger-Vink notation to describe point defects, build and interpret Brouwer diagrams, and apply the Debye-Hückel correction for charged defects. The course closes with diffusion kinetics and conductivity, plus characterization techniques like Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy and Electrostatic Force Microscopy. Special topics connect theory to devices you use daily, including transistors. In a capstone project, you'll qualify a candidate ceramic electrolyte for a solid oxide fuel cell, producing a Material Qualification Report that ties structure, defect chemistry, and transport together. Who this is for: third- and fourth-year undergraduates in materials science, chemical engineering, physics, or chemistry, plus incoming graduate students and engineers working with oxide materials.