The products of technical ceramics include tiles used in the Space Shuttle program, gas burner nozzles, ballistic protection, nuclear fuel uranium oxide pellets, bio-medical implants, jet engine turbine blades, and missile nose cones. Its products are often made from materials other than clay, chosen for their particular physical properties. These may be classified as follows: Oxides: silica, alumina, zirconia Non-oxides: carbides, borides, nitrides, silicides Composites: particulate or whisker reinforced matrices, combinations of oxides and non-oxides (e.g. polymers). Ceramics can be used in many technological industries. One application is the ceramic tiles on NASA's Space Shuttle, used to protect it and the future supersonic space planes from the searing heat of re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. They are also used widely in electronics and optics. In addition to the applications listed here, ceramics are also used as a coating in various engineering cases. An example would be a ceramic bearing coating over a titanium frame used for an aircraft. Recently the field has come to include the studies of single crystals or glass fibres, in addition to traditional polycrystalline materials, and the applications of these have been overlapping and changing rapidly.

Aerospace[edit] Engines: shielding a hot running aircraft engine from damaging other components. Airframes: used as a high-stress, high-temp and lightweight bearing and structural component. Missile nose-cones: shielding the missile internals from heat. Space Shuttle tiles Space-debris ballistic shields: ceramic fiber woven shields offer better protection to hypervelocity (~7 km/s) particles than aluminium shields of equal weight.[26] Rocket nozzles: focusing high-temperature exhaust gases from the rocket booster. Unmanned Air Vehicles: ceramic engine utilization in aeronautical applications (such as Unmanned Air Vehicles) may result in enhanced performance characteristics and less operational costs.[27]