Materials for Design

Zirconium Oxide (aka Zirconia)

Advanced ceramics form a large part of the new man-made luxury materials market. Partly because of the associations that come from their use in high-end engineering applications and partly because they do look very advanced. A quality that is derived from how they are finished and polished, which ranges from a smooth, matt, cold surface to mirror-like dark polished colours that look like coloured chrome.

This visual association is not the only link with metals. On a practical level, advanced ceramics have two distinct properties that result in them being used in applications where metals have previously been used. One of these properties is their hardness in comparison to metals, which tend to have edges that will ...