What Are the Benefits of Ceramic Vape Coils?

Have you ever heard of ceramic vape coils? A few years ago, ceramic coils were all the rage among owners of sub-ohm tanks. Today, most sub-ohm tank users have gravitated toward coils with cotton wicks, but ceramic coils have found new life in all-in-one vape pens and other smaller vaping devices. So, what are ceramic vape coils, and what are their benefits? Is it worthwhile to find a tank with a ceramic coil if you’re currently using a coil with a cotton wick? You’re about to learn the answers to those questions.

Yes – ROBO2020 Cleans Ceramic Coils!

As you’re about to learn, one of the biggest benefits of ceramic vape coils is that they’re just about indestructible. They are not, however, impervious to coil gunk and other forms of residue from your vaping material. The ROBO2020 automatic vape coil cleaner cleans and dries the ceramic coils for your sub-ohm tank or vape pen in just 30 minutes, making it possible for you to reuse those coils again and again. It’s a must-have accessory if you want your ceramic coils to last as long as they can.

What Is a Ceramic Vape Coil?

The term “ceramic coil” is actually a bit of a misnomer in that the actual heating surface in a ceramic coil isn’t ceramic at all and is actually a traditional wound metal wire or occasionally a strip of metal mesh. In a ceramic coil, it’s the wick that’s made from ceramic. We’ll explain a bit more about how the wick works in a moment. In a ceramic coil, it is ceramic – rather than the traditional cotton – that absorbs the e-liquid from the tank and brings it to the heating coil.

What Are the Types of Ceramic Coils?

There are three different types of ceramic vape coils. They are:

• Ceramic coils for sub-ohm tanks. These function exactly like the coils you use now, except that the coils’ wicks are ceramic rather than cotton. For reasons we’ll soon explain, pre-built ceramic sub-ohm coils aren’t as popular today as they once were, so it’s unlikely that a ceramic coil is available for the tank you’re using now. To use pre-built ceramic coils with a sub-ohm tank, you’ll likely have to buy a new tank. For example, ceramic coils are available for the Kangertech SSOCC platform, which includes the SubTank, the TopTank and the NEBOX.
• Ceramic coils for all-in-one devices and vape pens. Since these devices operate at lower wattages than sub-ohm tanks, they’re more likely to have ceramic coils available. Ceramic coils have, in fact, become quite popular in certain types of low-wattage vaping devices because they are resistant to heat and work well with very thick liquids.
• Rebuildable atomizer coils with rope-shaped ceramic wicks. These are not common.

What Are the Types of Ceramic Vape Wicks, and How Are They Made?

Ceramic vape wicks come in three forms. Although they’re quite different from one another, they all accomplish the same goal of using ceramic material to move e-liquid from a reservoir to a heating coil.

• The most common type of ceramic wick for vaping is made from tiny ceramic fibers woven into a sort of blanket. This page shows a few examples of the types of fibers that can be made from ceramic. In this type of coil, a small ceramic fiber pad is wrapped around the heating wire in the same way that a cotton pad would ordinarily be used.
• It’s also possible to find vape coils with wicks made from hard sintered ceramic. This patent describes how sintered ceramic wicks are made. Basically, you mix liquid ceramic with an organic material before pouring the mixture into a mold to harden. When you bake the hardened wick at an extremely high temperature, the organic material burns away, leaving you with a solid ceramic wick that has many small holes. The e-liquid flows from the tank’s reservoir to the heating wire by seeping through the holes. Sintered ceramic wicks are used in vape coils intended to operate at low temperatures.
• The final type of ceramic vape wick takes the form of a rope made from spun fibers similar to the fibers used to make ceramic blankets and pads as described above. This type of wick isn’t common, but it is occasionally used in rebuildable atomizers. Building the coil involves wrapping the heating wire around the ceramic rope.

What Are the Benefits of Ceramic Vape Coils?

Ceramic is less common than cotton as a material for vape wicks, but it does have a significant number of dedicated users for these two reasons.

Ceramic Vape Coils Are Impervious to Heat

Ceramic is very different from cotton in that it doesn’t burn at any temperature a vape coil can reach. When you use a coil with a cotton wick, it’s very easy to burn the wick because you’ve forgotten to refill the tank or simply because the coil’s design doesn’t promote efficient wicking action. When you burn your coil’s wick, the flavor of that coil is ruined forever. You’ll taste that harsh burned flavor with every puff. That never happens with a ceramic wick.

Ceramic Vape Coils Deliver Perfectly Pure Flavor

If you’ve only ever used vape coils with cotton wicks, you’re probably completely happy with the flavor because it’s all you’ve ever experienced. There are some people, though, who believe that a ceramic wick delivers an even purer flavor because it’s more inert and because it doesn’t react to heat stress in the way that cotton does. In fact, companies used to advertise their ceramic coils as the ideal products for flavor chasers. Taste is subjective, but you might consider trying a ceramic coil if you’re not completely happy with the flavor of cotton wicks.

What Are the Drawbacks of Ceramic Vape Coils?

At the beginning of the article, we mentioned that ceramic vape coils aren’t in common use today despite their benefits. You probably assumed that using a coil with a ceramic wick has some equally big drawbacks, and that assumption is correct. These are the drawbacks of ceramic vape coils.

Ceramic Wicks Aren’t as Efficient as Cotton Wicks

The primary problem with ceramic wicks is that they simply don’t transport e-liquid as efficiently as cotton. Ceramic coils for sub-ohm tanks peaked in popularity several years ago, and the coils available at that time typically worked best within a power range of about 30-50 watts. With one of today’s mesh coils operating in the 70-90-watt range or even higher, a ceramic wick would never be able to keep up, and you’d get dry hits constantly. Even when you’re operating at 50 watts or lower, you still need to wait several seconds between puffs when you’re using a ceramic coil because the wick needs time to absorb more e-liquid.

The Safety Profile of Ceramic Coils Is Unknown

Some people have raised the idea that ceramic coils may experience heat stress at the microscopic level during use and that the heat stress may lead to the inhalation of ceramic particles. To be fair, though, the safety profile of vaping with a cotton wick is also unknown. It may be many years before we know what the safest type of vaping wick is.