Aluminium was coated on silicon nitride ceramics by a low-pressure plasma spraying method, in order to form a tight bond between aluminium and the ceramics. Aluminium nitride formed as a interfacial reaction product between the aluminium coating layer and the ceramics. Two pieces of the aluminium-coated Si3N4 ceramics were then joined using the aluminium coating layers as filler metal in a vacuum of 1.3 x 10(-3) Pa at 973 K. The average bending strength and Weibull modulus of the joint are 340 MPa and 6.3 respectively, considerably higher than the 230 MPa and 0.9 of a Si3N4 ceramics joint brazed with an aluminum plate under the same condition.