Chaoying Ni, professor of materials science and engineering, has been awarded a grant from the II-VI Foundation to investigate “Thermal Transport in SiC and Diamond Based Composites.” The one-year $95,000 award will support experimental and computational work aimed at elucidating the relationships among microstructural characteristics, thermal transport properties, and mechanistic essentials including interfacial and grain boundary behaviors of these composite systems. Application for these materials include high-energy laser mirrors, armor, and semiconductor fabrication equipment due to their outstanding thermal, mechanical and environmental properties.

The mission of the II-VI Foundation is “to encourage and enable students to pursue a career in engineering, science and mathematics while maintaining a standard of excellence in that pursuit.” The foundation’s one-year awards are potentially renewable for three years. Ni was previously supported by II-VI for work on “Reaction Bonded SiC-Si and B4C-SiC-Si Ceramic Matrix Composites: Formation, Microstructure and Properties.” That three-year project will be completed on June 30, and the new award will begin on July 1.