Many researchers advice using ceramic coating for the piston in the internal combustion engines and present an enhancement in the engine performance. Are these results logic from cost and efficiency point of views?
Advantages of ceramic coating of piston head surface include a decrease of heat into the piston, which could increase engine efficiency and decrease thermal piston load at the same time.
This technology is not ready for mass production engines yet, because of high costs and problems with the coating process itself. In addition, the ceramic coating shows bad durability behavior: ceramic breaks from the piston metal surface because of vibration and different thermal coefficients.
An alternative could be complete ceramic piston design.
We tried that 30 years ago, back in the "adiabatic" engine days. Found no gain in thermal efficiency, a marginal reduction in the heat load through the piston on a cast iron piston. Plasma spray coatings (then, at least) didn't stick well to the piston. The engine is not adiabatic, and the heat exchange between the wall and gasses is affected in an adverse manner by the higher wall temperature. There is lots of literature about this in the 70's an 80's. I don't know of anybody who's considering it today.
It sounds like a great idea, but the previous respondents have added some very real issues. What you have to factor in are the huge investments people have made in current technology, which is reasonably cheap (aluminium alloys) and can be made anywhere. Even China (in my direct experience) can produce some world-class pistons, despite some high-profile failures (again I have felt the results of this).
Motor manufacturers are often quite risk-averse - look at the many attempts to remove/replace poppet valves with spheroids or electrically-operated ones.
Ceramic exhaust pipe coatings (as slurry) has even been slow on the uptake, despite its ease of application and many advantages in preventing down-pipe discolouration on motorcycles, or allowing the cat to warm up quickly in the critical emissions-controlled first few minutes from cold, for example.
What seems like a good theoretical concept needs matching against real-world benefits and commercial realisation.
I haven,t see anyone discuss the technology from cost side. Doe it cheap, can it reduce the piston costs? I think no. Then it is high cost technology with low advantage. It seems to me it has no future in engine manufacturing.