University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

A team of materials scientists at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science is exploring ways to create tough ceramics, a long sought-after class of materials that would be exceptionally hard, capable of withstanding extremely high temperatures and less prone to corrosion than metals, but still have the ability to become dented or deformed without fracturing, a property called ductility. In other words, a ceramic that bends but doesn’t break.