Most people think I have lost my mind when I tell them we did that 20 + years ago, lol.
On the ceramics. We do have a local ceramic mfg. plant been in operation since back in the 60's I think. I interviewed for a drafting designer job with them at one time. My aunt worked there for years. When I interviewed the plant manager showed me his ceramic watch a Rado you cannot scratch the think unless it was a diamond.
They started out making mainly electrical stuff and thread guides for the textile industry, then cutting tools and eventually have made some prototypes for ceramic engines. No coolant, no oil needed. That was proven to be way too costly and was dropped. I think Nissan does use ceramic sleeves in their super cars.
When I was doing lots of zinc die casting I went to them to start to develop a ceramic sleeve and piston to use in the injection on the zinc presses. The zinc being 800 deg. and very corrosive would eat the metal pistons and rings up pretty fast. You had to gradually heat the ceramic parts up before putting into the zinc but when in there you could leave for months with no size change or loss of structure. We got bought out and closed so I never got to develop them.
I eventually got me a Rado watch that I wore for years and never a scratch. Watch case and band is made from black ceramic. Wore it in the bush of Africa for months and nothing.
Wanted to try a ceramic sleeve in the kart engine but they had nothing even close to right dia. and like you said very expensive to make it special.
All of the racers here use ceramic coating on their pistons. Seems like I recall the melting point like 30,000 deg???
Link to the company here.
https://global.kyocera.com/prdct/fc/index.html
I also tried coating lawn mower blades with ceramic and they lasted much longer but the company I worked for saw that as a fault. They wanted to sell replacement blades we made I think 4,000,000 blades a year and they cost as little as $.85 to make and you know how much they cost in the store.
There are lots of things that could be done to make things better but mfg. does not want to so they can sell more new things.