The key difference between clay and ceramic is that clay contains moistened minerals such as aluminum silicates and crystalline silica, whereas ceramic contains metal oxides such as zirconium oxide, silica oxide or silica carbide.

The terms clay and ceramic are usually compared in the field of pottery and as kiln materials. These materials have many important industrial applications.

CONTENTS

1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Clay 
3. What is Ceramic 
4. Side by Side Comparison – Clay vs Ceramic in Tabular Form
5. Summary

What is Clay?

Clay is a type of natural soil material consisting of clay minerals. This material usually develops plasticity when it is wet enough. This happens due to the molecular film of water that surrounds the clay particles. However, clay becomes hard and brittle when it is in the dry state or upon heating/firing and becomes non-plastic.

Figure o1: Appearance of Clay

Typically, pure clay is white-coloured or light-coloured. However, naturally occurring clay shows different colors due to the presence of impurities. The most common colors include red, brown or reddish-brown color. These colors are due to the presence of iron oxide compounds in clay. More importantly, clay is the oldest known type of ceramic.

From ancient times, people discovered and used clay as a material for pottery due to its plasticity that becomes non-plastic when heated. Furthermore, this material is useful in many industries now, including papermaking, cement production, and chemical filtering.

What is Ceramic?

Ceramic is an inorganic, nonmetallic material that gets hardened at high temperatures. The atomic structure of this material comes in forms such as crystalline, non-crystalline or partially crystalline. However, this material often has a crystalline atomic structure.

Figure 02: A Ceramic Pot

Moreover, we can classify ceramics as traditional or advanced ceramic mainly, depending on their applications. Most of them are opaque except glass. Silica, clay, limestone, magnesia, alumina, borates, zirconia, etc., are useful as raw materials for ceramics.

Furthermore, this material is shock resistant, high strength, abrasion-resistant material. However, their electrical conductivity is poor. In addition, we can fabricate this material by forming a paste containing very fine powder of raw materials and water into a given shape and then by sintering. Due to manufacturing processes, ceramic is a little more expensive than glass. Moreover, natural ceramics like stones, clay, and porcelain are also useful in day-to-day life.

What is the Difference Between Clay and Ceramic?

Clay is a type of natural soil material consisting of clay minerals while ceramic is an inorganic, nonmetallic material that gets hardened at high temperatures. Clay is a type of ceramic. The key difference between clay and ceramic is that clay contains moistened minerals such as aluminum silicates and crystalline silica, whereas ceramic contains metal oxides such as zirconium oxide, silica oxide or silica carbide. Moreover, clay kilns are good as earthenware kilns and are good for low-fire clay handling while ceramic kilns are good for high-fire clay handling. Besides, clay is cheaper than ceramic materials.

Below is the summary of the difference between clay and ceramic in tabular form.

Summary – Clay vs Ceramic

We can identify clay as a type of ceramic. But we use these terms separately because clay is a common material that is abundant than the other types of ceramic. The key difference between clay and ceramic is that clay contains moistened minerals such as aluminum silicates and crystalline silica, whereas ceramic contains metal oxides such as zirconium oxide, silica oxide or silica carbide.

Reference:

1. “Ceramic Vs. Clay.” Hunker, Available here.
2. “Ceramic” Wikipedia.org. Available here.

Image Courtesy:

1. “Clay-ss-2005” By Siim Sepp – Own work (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Commons Wikimedia
2. “AMI – Kamaresvase 1” By Wolfgang Sauber – Own work (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Commons Wikimedia

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pbXFn5yrnZ6YsqOx07CcnqZemLyue8OinZ%2Bdopq7pLGMm5ytr5Wau26vy5qwZpmemXqksdGapKKbXw%3D%3D