In an early May meeting of the Ceramics Expo 2018, we were invited to participate in a panel discussion regarding- Innovative Ceramic Research for Commercialization. The other 2 participants besides Semplastics/X-MAT were Clemson University and the US Naval Research Laboratory. Both research institutions are involved in cutting edge ceramic technology developments involving Polymer Derived Ceramic(PDC) technologies with Clemson developing unique coating applications and the US Naval Research Laboratory developing impact resistant ceramic technologies.
Semplastics/X-MAT presented work that was also associated with polymer derived ceramics. The emphasis of this work concerned the fields of bulk ceramic structures from polymer derived ceramics. Four research areas were highlighted: bulk ceramic mirror substrates made from PDCs, coal core composites made from PDCs, ceramic particles made from PDCs and additively manufactured/3D printed structures made from PDCs. X-MAT highlighted the need to have alignment between the capital that would be needed to bring these technologies to market and the innovative culture of X-MAT.