CAREER: Ultrafast Laser Manufacturing of Polymer-Derived Ceramics for High-Performance Ceramic Composite Materials

This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award supports research and education aimed at innovating how advanced ceramic composite materials are manufactured for demanding applications. Ceramic matrix composites combine reinforcing phases with ceramic matrices to provide strength, toughness, and resistance to heat, corrosion, and wear for uses in aerospace, defense, energy, semiconductor, and biomedical technologies. However, conventional fabrication methods are often multi-step and provide limited control over microstructure, while existing additive manufacturing methods can suffer from weak interfacial bonding and uneven reinforcement. This project develops a new ultrafast laser-based manufacturing strategy for polymer-derived ceramics that enables precise local control of structure and properties, creating a pathway to ceramic composite materials with tailored performance and functionality. By advancing fundamental understanding of laser-matter interactions and opening new routes for manufacturing high-performance ceramic materials, the project serves the national interest by promoting the progress of science, supporting innovation in advanced manufacturing, and contributing to technologies important for space exploration, energy-efficient systems, semiconductor devices, and other societally important applications, while strengthening the nation’s technological competitiveness. The project also integrates research and education by training students in emerging ultrafast laser manufacturing technologies, incorporating research into undergraduate and graduate courses, and engaging local K–12 students and educators through accessible, hands-on outreach activities, all of which contribute to STEM workforce development. The project investigates two complementary ultrafast laser fabrication modes for polymer-derived ceramics and examines how laser processing can be used to control material conversion, microstructure evolution, and resulting properties. Specifically, the research addresses three connected goals: to determine the mechanisms governing ultrafast laser-driven modification and conversion in preceramic polymers, including the coupled effects of laser energy deposition, thermal confinement, chemical transformation, and stress development; to establish relationships among processing conditions, resulting material structures, and performance through in situ diagnostics, ex situ characterization, and multiscale computational modeling; and to integrate these insights with reinforcement phases to create graded ceramic matrix composites with enhanced interfacial bonding, programmable microstructures, and tailored properties. By combining experiments and modeling, the project will generate validated principles for ultrafast laser interactions with preceramic polymers and establish transferable manufacturing knowledge for laser-based ceramic fabrication across a range of material systems. These advances will provide a foundation for precise, scalable fabrication of high-performance ceramic composites and broaden the scientific and technological reach of advanced ceramic manufacturing. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2541754 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Heng Zuo | Institution: University of New Mexico, ALBUQUERQUE, NM | Award Amount: $550,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2541754 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2541754.html