VITA In-Ceram® Professionals

Definition

Ceramic: Terminology and basic facts

What is ceramic? The term stems from ancient Greek. Keramos (Κέραμος) stood for clay and everything that was fired from it. From around 5000 BC, the method of modeling and firing objects from clay has been known.

Today the term has a wider meaning. We hereby see it as being objects which are modeled from inorganic, small-grained raw materials by adding water at room temperature and which are subsequently dried. During firing these objects are sintered above a temperature of 900 °C to become hard, permanent objects.