Low-cost Manufacturing of Bioinspired Damage-Tolerant Ceramic Composites

Despite favorable properties of ceramic-metal composites, they have not been applied commercially to date, due in large part to processing cost and challenges. The conventional method for manufacturing lamellar ceramic-metal composites is melt-infiltration of the metal phase into the gaps of the ceramic scaffold. The smaller the gap, the more difficult the infiltration.

Because of the poor wetting between most metals and ceramics, the process requires high pressure and temperature to squeeze the molten metal into the gaps in the ceramic phase. This project aims at developing manufacturing strategies inspired by nature to enable low-cost fabrication of ceramic-metal composites. Natural materials such as bone and the nacreous part of sea-shells have developed structural composites, using a set of rather ordinary constituents, which exhibit extraordinary mechanical properties.

For example, seashells convert a brittle ceramic material to a super-tough material (nacre) by incorporation of around 5% polymer, in a layered ?brick-and-mortar? microstructure. The scientific community has been very successful in identifying the design principles of biological structural composites. However, manufacturing knowledge gaps persist.

These include the challenge of infiltration of small gaps between ceramic bricks, the challenge of obtaining ductile (while strong) mortars; the challenge in design of proper (metal-ceramic) interfaces; and the high cost. Low-cost processes for fabrication of metal−ceramic composites can substantially increase their applications in various industries including automotive, aerospace, oil and defense, in products such as high performance wear-resistance parts, cutting tools, lightweight structural composites, and aero-engine components.

For these reasons, the project directly impacts American economic welfare and national security. The educational objective of the project is focused on increasing the diversity in nanotechnology- STEM through ?NanoExplorer? summer program for high school students, with particular emphasis on female students, including Latinos.

The goal of this research is to investigate the mechanisms underlying processing and manufacturing of ceramic composites for damage-tolerant structural applications. The project is focused on understanding infiltration of nanotwinned metals into nano-gaps (