Ceramic engineering is the science of creating objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials. This is done using either heat or precipitation reactions on high-purity chemical solutions at lower temperatures. The term includes the purification of raw materials, the study and production of chemical compounds, their formation into components, and the study of their structure, composition, and properties.
Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, with long-range order on atomic scale. Glass-ceramics may have an amorphous or glassy structure. They can be formed from a molten mass that solidifies on cooling or chemically synthesized at low temperatures using methods such as hydrothermal synthesis.
