Until the 1980s, most people thought of ceramics as artware and artifacts. The recent development of advanced ceramics for high performance thermal insulation (space shuttle tiles), high temperature structures (heat engines), and electronics (superconductors) has dramatically changed perceptions about the utility of ceramics.

High technology ceramics are related to “traditional” ceramics only to the extent that they are inorganic, nonmetallic materials. Traditional ceramics are derived from minerals. For example, dinnerware and bricks consist mostly of clay, while sand is the major ingredient in flat glass and containers. Abundant raw materials, simple processing, adequate performance at low cost, and technological evolution have kept these industries viable for several thousand years.

But, for demanding electronic or structural applications, synthesizing ceramics from minerals is often unacceptable. The chemical variability of mineral deposits, the difficulty of obtaining a homogeneous mixture of powders, and the problems of consolidating the powders into a uniform ceramic with desirable grain morphology, chemistry and grain boundary phases have stimulated the development of chemically derived ceramic precursors.