Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 2 No. 4 Winter 2017 | Page 16

science providing the underlying technology
to develop designs with an array of interesting
and useful properties. The challenge is to create
a way of producing the materials quickly and
affordably.
This is especially challenging for materials
that have been traditionally extremely difficult
to process, such as bulk ceramics. Zheng noted
that ceramics have many desirable properties,
including dielectric, chemical and heat and high
temperature resistance, but they have limited
applications due to their high flaw sensitivity,
weight and catastrophic fracture behavior
upon loading. This load failure is attributed to
MOMENTUM
WINTER'17

the persistence of distributed flaws within the
ceramics such as cracks and voids.
Traditional ceramic manufacturing methods
make it nearly impossible to create complex
shapes and interconnected porosities with high
precision. This limitation significantly reduces
their potential applications in areas such as
integrated circuities, energy transduction and
storage, and space-related applications.
Zheng realizes that to get the most benefit
from some materials, going small is the best
way to get big.
“Some materials work better the smaller they
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