NSF / DOE SBIR Phase I Concept Brief · 2026

Volatile-Templated Ceramic Microstructures: NSF/DOE SBIR Phase I Concept Brief

InTelluric / Alnitak Group — Los Angeles, CA

Full concept brief available upon request. Contact [email protected] with subject: VTCM concept brief request.

Executive Summary

The fundable technical concept is not a general claim that porous ceramics can be useful — that is already established. The fundable concept is a process-intelligence platform for engineering functional ceramic microstructures by controlling the transient phases normally treated as binder burnout, pore-former removal, salt volatilization, or unwanted gas evolution.

The Phase I project is framed as a validation program for volatile-templated ceramic microstructures: green-body chemistry and firing schedule are treated as controllable inputs; gas evolution, carbonization, flux migration, and phase segregation are treated as intermediate process events; pore connectivity, boundary films, carbon residue, and lamellar geometry are treated as measurable structures; dielectric, acoustic, RF, or microwave response is treated as the functional output.

NSF relevance rests on unproven high-impact R&D with technical risk and commercial potential. DOE relevance rests on feasibility and proof-of-concept work in energy-relevant materials, advanced manufacturing, sensing, RF/microwave structures, and harsh-environment components. Both pathways require the same causal chain — from process variable to measurable structure to validated functional response — rather than a device pitch or a recipe collection.

Phase I Objective Structure

// Four work packages retire one uncertainty class each WP1 Thermal and process map // TGA/DSC/EGA across formulation matrix; firing window identification WP2 Microstructure fabrication // SEM / micro-CT / porosity atlas; ≥3 reproducible microstructure families WP3 Functional measurement // dielectric / RF / acoustic response matrix vs. controls WP4 Downselect // prototype target identification for Phase II; design rule extraction // Go/no-go criteria defined before work begins, not after WP1 pass: clear thermal event and firing window per formulation WP2 pass: ≥3 reproducible microstructure families via controlled process variables WP3 pass: statistically separable functional response vs. dense and porous controls WP4 pass: Phase II prototype architecture identified with commercial translation path

Key Terms

volatile-templated ceramics NSF SBIR Phase I DOE SBIR process-intelligence platform sacrificial templating carbonizing residue flux segregation binder burnout pore-former removal process-structure-property dielectric ceramics RF/microwave absorber acoustic tile harsh-environment sensor TGA/DSC/EGA SEM / micro-CT VNA / impedance spectroscopy Phase I go/no-go commercial translation

Key Findings

—The strongest proposal frame is a materials-process R&D platform, not a device pitch and not a recipe collection. The proposal leads with a measurable process problem — functional ceramic response is often discussed after densification, but many useful response modes emerge from transient processing phases that control porosity, tortuosity, residual carbon, intergranular films, and phase-separated microdomains. This framing satisfies both NSF and DOE Phase I review criteria without overclaiming device-level performance before feasibility is established.
—Technical risk is the central selling point for NSF/DOE SBIR, not a weakness to be minimized. The critical Phase I risk is not whether porous ceramics are known — they are — but whether the proposed process variables can reproducibly generate functionally distinct wave-response signatures. Foregrounding this distinction positions the concept as the correct kind of unproven-but-grounded R&D that SBIR Phase I is designed to fund.
—Four work packages map to four distinct uncertainty classes: thermal decomposition behavior, microstructure reproducibility, functional response linkage, and commercial architecture downselect. Each work package has a defined pass/fail criterion specified before work begins. This structure satisfies the NSF requirement for defined objectives that reduce technical risk, and the DOE expectation for roughly 3–4 Phase I objectives with explicit work-plan linkage.
—Commercial translation paths are credible without overclaiming. RF/dielectric substrates, EMI/microwave absorbers, acoustic tiles, harsh-environment sensor packages, catalyst and membrane supports, and tunable porous ceramics all represent established markets with documented procurement from ceramic suppliers. The concept brief identifies these paths without asserting device-level performance metrics that cannot be supported by Phase I scope.