What is ceramic tourmaline? Why is it used rather than actual tourmaline?

Both ceramic and natural tourmaline are pyroelectric and piezoelectric, generating negative ions upon heating or pressure.  

Tourmaline ceramic is baked of clay, tourmaline powder, some other volcanic rocks, ores, stones, and minerals finely milled to micronized or nanopowders. It is mixed with water and shaped into disks, hexagons, or microspheres/balls. Finally, it is heated to 1300 °C to remove all impurities and then baked like standard ceramics. 

These tourmaline ceramics are widely used to generate FIR Heating and Negative Ions, and they are rather cheap. It is much cheaper to make a ceramic disk than to cut the natural stone into disks, especially for such stone as tourmaline, where the bigger stones are quite rare, and it easily crushes when processed.

For the overall effect, there is no big difference between natural or ceramic tourmaline. But the shape is what makes a big difference. Ereada® mats are built with 2-3mm ceramic tourmaline microspheres. They have a much larger surface than natural stones and emit more Ions and FIR Rays.

The baking process also allows adding different functional ingredients changing the FIR spectrum, such as pearl, gold ore, yellow ochre, elvan, charcoal, etc.

Both natural and ceramic tourmaline is used in our gemstone mats and pillows.