This award supports the travel costs of twelve U.S. scientists to participate in a U.S.-German seminar on advanced ceramics to be held near Munich, Germany, in November, 1990. German sources are financing all costs of the meeting and the subsistence of the 30 to 40 experts expected to attend. The meeting is co-organized by Professor Lisa C. Klein of Rutgers University and Drs. Richard Brook and Ralf Riedel of the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart. They are well known and widely-respected in this field. The purposes of the workshop are to discuss the state-of-the-art in powder free processing for advanced ceramics, to identify important research directions for the future and to promote opportunities for productive international cooperation. Specific themes shaping the discussions are 1) the sol-gel route for the preparation of monolithic oxide ceramics and glasses; 2) polymer pyrolysis for the preparation of monolithic non-oxide ceramics; and 3) the direct metal oxidation (dimox) process and biological methods for the formation of ceramics. Great efforts have been made in recent years to reach the levels of structural reliability which would allow ceramics to be used with confidence in a wide range of applications. Much of the work has been concerned with improving powder-based methods that would reduce the occurrence of microscopic faults and flaws within the materials. Although there has been great progress in powder processing science in recent years, the risk of flaws with powder systems remains considerable. This meeting has the timely and worthwhile objective of examining alternative processing methods that would allow the fabrication of ceramics without the use of powders. The U.S. and European participants are leaders in this field and represent both established and younger scientists. The topics selected as foci will ensure significant interactions in forefront areas.
