The aerospace industry has been witnessing significant growth in the past few years, as a number of countries are increasingly investing for the procurement of defense aircrafts. In addition to this, as the disposable income of people is growing, they are spending more on luxury and business travel. Furthermore, these people are opting for air travel, attributed to which, the demand for commercial aircrafts is growing as well. For example, the Boeing Company received 893 airplane orders in January 2019, which was a rise from 806 orders in 2018. Since aircraft components are critical in nature, they are produced using enhanced materials which can aid in maintaining the integrity of structures.
As transparent ceramics are widely utilized in the aerospace industry, their demand is on the rise as well. Initially, transparent ceramics were developed for replacing single crystals due to their simple processing route, high yield productivity, variability in composition, and shape control. One of the major properties of transparent ceramics is optical transparency. In order to achieve this, ceramics need to have crystal structures that are highly symmetrical, which is why most of these ceramics have cubic structures.Because of the wide applications of these ceramics, the global transparent ceramics market is predicted to advance at a considerable rate in the near future.
Optical transparency of these ceramics is determined by their density and purity. In addition to this, transparent ceramics need to possess specific mechanical properties for some application, including composite armor and window materials, which is why nanocomposite and nanosized ceramics are also gaining wide popularity these days. To sum it up, these polycrystalline materials are stronger, harder, have certain light emittance, and are more resistant to corrosion as compared to glass and optical resin materials. Different transparent ceramic materials are sapphire, aluminum oxynitride, and spinel.
Other than aerospace & defense industry, transparent ceramics also find applications in medical, energy, and electric & electronics industries. The aerospace & defense industry is expected to create a significant demand for these materials in the coming years, which is due to the high-volume utilization of transparent ceramics in innovative optical domes, transparent armor, and windows for aircraft. Moreover, the growing aircraft production in Brazil and the U.S. is predicted to drive the demand for transparent ceramics in the near future.
This is because of the increasing expenditure in the defense sector by governments of different countries in the region, in order to take care of increasing number of security threats. For example, the Indian government allotted $66.9 million (INR 4,71,378 crore) to the defense sector in February 2020, for the fiscal year 2020–2021, which is considerable hike from the allotment of $44.5 billion (INR 3,18,000 crore) for the fiscal year 2019–2020.
In conclusion, the demand for transparent ceramics is growing due to their enhanced properties and the growth of the aerospace & defense sector.
