Carbon compound-reinforced ceramics have emerged as one of the most promising materials that can effectively overcome the issue of the brittleness of ceramics, allowing for the development of reliable structural components for application in energy, automotive, aerospace, or medical industries. Carbon-based nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes or graphene, are being used as reinforcements for ceramic matrices due to their small size, high aspect ratio, and exceptional mechanical properties. Their incorporation into different ceramic matrices, such as Al₂O₃, Si₃N₄, or ZrO₂, have led to an improvement in mechanical behavior, with stronger, tougher materials obtained. Such behavior positively affects other related properties, such as wear resistance or biocompatibility which, in turn, determine their extensive industrial utilization. Diverse toughening mechanisms, such as crack bridging, crack deflection, crack pinning, or crack deflection, have being proposed. All of these mechanisms critically depend on phase distribution within the matrix and, consequently, processing and fabrication techniques have become essential stage when designing such materials. In this Special Issue, research papers focused on carbon compound-reinforced ceramics, especially those that analyze new approaches to processing and fabrication of composite materials with improved mechanical properties, toughening mechanisms related to the interaction of crack propagation with carbon phases, and other properties directly related to fracture toughness such as wear resistance, thermal degradation, or thermal shock resistance, either using experimental or a modeling approaches.
Keywords: carbon-reinforced ceramics; carbon nanotubes; graphene; carbon nanofibers; fracture toughness; toughening mechanisms; wear resistance; thermal degradation.