High-strength cellular ceramic composites with
3D microarchitecture
Jens Bauera,1, Stefan Hengsbachb, Iwiza Tesaria, Ruth Schwaigera, and Oliver Krafta
a
Institute for Applied Materials and bKarlsruhe Nano Micro Facility, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, D-76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
Edited* by William D. Nix, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved January 9, 2014 (received for review August 12, 2013)
To enhance the strength-to-weight ratio of a material, one may try
to either improve the strength or lower the density, or both. The
lightest solid materials have a density in the range of 1,000 kg/m3;
only cellular materials, such as technical foams, can reach consid-
erably lower values. However, compared with corresponding bulk
materials, their specific strength generally is significantly lower.
Cellular topologies may be divided into bending- and stretching-
dominated ones. Technical foams are structured randomly and
behave in a bending-dominated way, which is less weight effi-
cient, with respect to strength, than stretching-dominated behav-
ior, such as in regular braced frameworks. Cancellous bone and
other natural cellular solids have an optimized architecture. Their
basic material is structured hierarchically and consists of nanometer-
size elements, providing a benefit from size effects in the material
strength. Designing cellular materials with a specific microarch-
itecture would allow one to exploit the structural advantages of
stretching-dominated constructions as well as size-dependent
strengthening effects. In this paper, we demonstrate that such mate-
rials may be fabricated. Applying 3D laser lithography, we produced
and characterized micro-truss and -shell structures made from alu-
mina–polymer composite. Size-dependent strengthening of alumina
shells has been observed, particularly when applied with a character-
istic thickness below 100 nm. The presented artificial cellular materi-
als reach compressive strengths up to 280 MPa with densities well
below 1,000 kg/m3.
T he suitability of a material for lightweight applications is
determined mainly by two properties: the specific strength
and the specific stiffness, here defined as the strength and stiff-
ness of a material divided by its density. In the past century,
major advancements have been made in optimizing classical
lightweight materials, such as aluminum alloys or composite
materials, with respect to these properties. However, the lightest
solid materials have a density in the range of 1,000 kg/m3 (1).
Natural lightweight materials, such as bone and wood, are not
fully dense and may exhibit considerably lower values (1). They
contain several levels of hierarchical structuring down to the
nanometer scale (1–3), leading to remarkable specific mechani-
cal properties (1–4). For instance, cancellous bone is built of
truss- or shell-like framework architectures grown adaptively to
the loading situation (5, 6). The material thickness and the ori-
entation of the individual structural elements depend on the
magnitude and orientation of loading. This leads to an optimized
topology, in which each structural element is aligned with the
principal stress trajectories (5, 6).
Technical foams are materials with open- or closed-cell po-
rosity of comparable low density and are used in lightweight
components, such as foam-core sandwich panels (1, 7). However,
their specific strength and stiffness are limited by their charac-
teristic stochastic architecture. Typically, considerably lower
values of specific strength and stiffness compared with the cor-
responding bulk materials are reached (1, 7). In addition to the
material properties, the architecture strongly affects the me-
chanical behavior of such cellular solids (1, 8, 9). Buckling, in-
homogeneity, and local stress concentrations (10) occur, because
foams cannot be considered only as materials but also as struc-
tures (1, 7).
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1315147111
Cellular topologies may be divided into bending- and stretch-
ing-dominated ones (8). Foams generally behave in a bending-
dominated manner (1, 8, 9). When abstracted to pin-jointed
frameworks, open-cell foams consist of unit cells that are stati-
cally indeterminate (8), e.g., cubic cells. Their topology would
allow the struts to rotate around the joints leading to a collapse
under loading (11). However, the joints of foams are frozen
rather than pin-jointed, causing the struts to bend. Gibson and
Ashby (1) showed that the mechanical properties of such bend-
ing-dominated foams depend on the relative density, ρp =ρs , where
ρp and ρs are the densities of the foam and the corresponding
solid material, respectively. The compressive strength of the foam
scales with ðρp =ρs Þ1:5 or even with higher exponents, depending
ENGINEERING
on the failure mechanism.
Stretching-dominated structures are considered to have much
better mechanical properties (8, 9, 12). The struts of a frame-
work, which is rigid when regarded as pin-jointed, are loaded in
tension or compression largely without bending (8). In two
dimensions, a triangle is the only statically determinate polygon.
In three dimensions, fully triangular structures, such as tetrahe-
dral truss constructions as initially developed by Bell (13), reach
a maximum of rigidity and stretching-dominated behavior (8).
Designing foam materials in such a manner facilitates a linear
scaling behavior of the strength and the stiffness with the relative
density (8, 9). However, the specific properties of bulk material
still are not quite reached (9).
Bone and other biological materials with a similar funda-
mental structure, such as shells (14) and teeth (15), achieve
improved strength of their basic material as a result of the ap-
pearance of mechanical size effects (16). On the lowest level of
hierarchy, bone consists of mineral crystal platelets with thickness
Significance
It has been a long-standing effort to create materials with low
density but high strength. Technical foams are very light, but
compared with bulk materials, their strength is quite low be-
cause of their random structure. Natural lightweight materials,
such as bone, are cellular solids with optimized architecture.
They are structured hierarchically and actually consist of
nanometer-size building blocks, providing a benefit from me-
chanical size effects. In this paper, we demonstrate that
materials with a designed microarchitecture, which provides
both structural advantages and size-dependent strengthening
effects, may be fabricated. Using 3D laser lithography, we
produced micro-truss and -shell structures from ceramic–poly-
mer composites that exceed the strength-to-weight ratio of all
engineering materials, with a density below 1,000 kg/m3.
Author contributions: J.B., I.T., and O.K. designed research; J.B., S.H., and R.S. performed
research; J.B., S.H., I.T., and O.K. analyzed data; and J.B. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
1
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jens.bauer@kit.edu.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.
1073/pnas.1315147111/-/DCSupplemental.
PNAS Early Edition | 1 of 6
on the order of a few nanometers integrated in a collagen matrix with design control down to the nanometer scale. We describe the
(17). The strength of both ductile (18) and brittle (19–21) materials design, processing, and mechanical characterization of several ce-
typically increases with decreasing dimensions. In the early 20th ramic–polymer composite structures with submicron feature size.
century, Griffith (22) proposed the relationship Although to date 3D-DLW is strongly limited in achievable sample
volume, it allows for production of almost arbitrary polymeric ge-
1 ometries (26). In conjunction with coating techniques, such as
σ f ∝ pffiffiffi [1]
c atomic layer deposition (ALD) (27), multimaterial composites
(28), as well as metallic (29) or ceramic (30) structures in which the
between the fracture strength, σ f , and the critical size of a flaw, c, polymer has been removed, may be fabricated. We present truss
for brittle materials such as ceramics. A flaw cannot be larger constructions with different structural properties as well as a shape-
than the component in which it is located. Assuming c correlates optimized honeycomb design (Fig. 1). All structures were fabri-
with the material thickness, t, of a structural element (16), Eq. 1 cated from polymer (IP-Dip; Nanoscribe GmbH) by 3D-DLW and
may be written as homogeneously coated with alumina (Al2O3) layers of different
thicknesses using ALD. The alumina coating carries tensile and
1 compressive forces, whereas the light polymeric core serves to
σ f ∝ pffi : [2]
t prevent early face buckling and to improve toughness. For me-
chanical characterization, uniaxial in situ and ex situ compression
Thus, the smaller the component, the higher is its fracture tests were performed.
strength. It has been argued that when fabricated thin enough, When coatings were applied with a characteristic thickness
materials might even exhibit strength values close to the below 100 nm, a substantial increase was observed in the mate-
theoretical strength when a critical thickness in the nanometer rial strength of alumina. Surpassing all technical foam materials,
range is reached (16). Assuming that failure no longer is gov- the trusses reach compressive strength values up to 55 MPa for
erned by the Griffith criterion but by the strength of atomic an estimated density of 410 kg/m3. Shape-optimized honeycomb
bonds in that regime, materials should become insensitive to structures achieve up to 280 MPa at 810 kg/m3, exceeding all
flaws (16). natural and engineering materials with a density below 1,000 kg/m3.
Designing cellular materials with a specific microarchitecture The specific compressive strengths obtained are higher than
would allow one both to exploit the structural advantages of those of most engineering metals and close to the ones of
stretching-dominated constructions and to gain enhanced ma- technical ceramics.
terial strength due to mechanical size effects, leading to superior As predicted theoretically (9, 23), the designed and minia-
cellular materials (9, 23). Recent improvements in material turized architecture benefits from both structural advantages
processing methods have led to cellular materials of extremely and size-dependent strengthening effects, facilitating values
low density with a periodic microarchitecture (24). However, the of specific strength beyond the accessible range of standard
freedom of design of these structures is limited by processing- cellular materials.
related restrictions (25). The producible topologies are bending
dominated and behave in a highly compliant manner. Results
In this paper, we propose 3D direct laser writing (3D-DLW) (26) All fabricated structures were tested in compression, as illus-
as a method for fabricating real 3D composite microarchitectures trated in Fig. 2A. Their bulk strength and stiffness depend on the

Fig. 1. Computer-aided design models (Upper) and SEM images (Lower) of examined cellular microarchitectures (scale bars: 10 μm). Design C is an ortho-
tropic construction with nonrigid cubic unit cells (C); therefore it generally is considered to behave in a rather bending-dominated manner. We also in-
troduced global diagonal bracings to obtain a more stretching-dominated and collapse-resistant behavior (B). When applied to all faces of every unit cell (A),
the structural stability is enhanced further. Stretching domination is maximized because the structure is fully triangular. The design may be regarded as
behaving fairly isotropically. Depending on the stiffness of junctions, collapse mechanisms are less urgent and topologies may be designed so that a maximum
of structural elements are arranged in loading direction, without risking early global buckling. We realized that approach with a hexagonal truss structure
(D), whose unit cell geometry is not rigid, just like that of design C, and with a shape-optimized honeycomb design (E). Both constructions behave aniso-
tropically.

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 ENGINEERING
Fig. 2. All cellular material designs were tested mechanically under uniaxial compressive loading (compare Movies S1–S4). (A) An in situ test of a polymeric
truss structure (side view). (B) Stress–strain curves of fully triangular trusses (Fig. 1A). Alumina layers of the indicated thicknesses have been deposited onto
a polymeric core structure. With increasing layer thickness, the compressive strength and stiffness (Young’s modulus E) increase strongly compared with bare
polymeric structures. (C) Specific compressive strength as a function of the coating thickness t. Labels refer to the nomenclature of Fig. 1. The estimated stress
at failure inside the alumina layer, σ A (Eq. 5), increases with decreasing layer thickness. All data points correspond to at least three measurements. Error bars
give the corresponding maximal upper and lower deviation.

thickness of the deposited alumina layer, as selected stress–strain
curves show in Fig. 2B. Regardless of the coating thickness,
the size of all polymeric core structures remains unvaried.
Starting from low values of about 2 MPa for pure polymeric
structures, the compressive strength increases up to 34 MPa
with the introduction of the alumina coatings. Simultaneously,
Young’s modulus, E, increases from about 0.1 to 1.4 GPa. All
curves exhibit nonlinear behavior for lower strains, which is
related to experimental issues, such as small misalignment and
roughness at the top surface of the structure. There is no sys-
tematic dependency on the coating thickness (compare Mate-
rials and Methods).
Fig. 2C shows the specific strength of several designs in re-
lation to the layer thickness of alumina (all data are given in
Supporting Information). Architectures A and B (compare Table
S1) achieve almost equal specific values. Topology C (compare
Table S1) behaves similar to design D but is less effective
throughout. It clearly is shown that the specific strength of all
structures increases once thin alumina layers are deposited, as
the strength of alumina is much higher than that of IP-Dip.
However, with growing coating thickness, the increase becomes
less pronounced (design D) or even saturates (designs A and E).
Optimized honeycomb structures with a solid-material fraction
of only 15% alumina (50 nm) reach the same specific strength as
those with 40% (200 nm) (compare Table S1).
Based on the test data of the honeycomb structures, the stress
at failure, σ A , inside the alumina layers (Eq. 5) has been esti-
mated analytically. A significant increase may be observed for
a characteristic thickness in the range below 100 nm; σ A increases
from 1,180 to 3,900 MPa, a value noticeably higher than the typical
compressive strength of bulk alumina (1, 19).
Failure mechanisms depend on both the architecture of the
structures and the thicknesses of the coatings (Fig. 3). We
detected buckling and brittle fracture as the two major
mechanisms. Bare polymeric and thinner-coated structures
collapse by buckling. Whereas trusses A and B buckle locally
(Fig. 3A), designs C and D allow global buckling modes (Fig.
3H; compare Movies S1–S3). With growing layer thickness of
the coatings, the failure mechanism shifts to brittle fracture.
Depending on the architecture, this transition occurs at dif-
ferent layer thicknesses. For 50 nm, local buckling still may be
critical for designs A and B, but fracture due to high tensile
stresses at the notches of the junctions may occur as fre-
quently (Fig. 3C) and dominates at 100 nm (Fig. 3D). For 200
nm alumina thickness, compressive failure of the vertical
struts sets in (Fig. 3E). Compared with A and B, the honey-
comb design resists buckling for thinner coatings and crushes

Bauer et al. PNAS Early Edition | 3 of 6

Fig. 3. Failed samples of different coating thickness (see headings) and architecture (Upper, design A; Lower, designs C–E). With growing layer thickness of
alumina, the failure mechanism changes from buckling to brittle fracture. (A) Polymeric truss designs A and B buckle with large plastic deformations. (B–E)
Once coated with Al2O3, plastic deformation is reduced significantly (compare Movies S1 and S2). (B) Face buckling, fine networks of surface cracks, and
squamous flaking occur. (C) In the range of 50-nm thick coatings, brittle fracture of the vertical compressive bars, normal to the loading direction as well as
close to the junctions, was observed. (D) Reaching 100 nm, fracture was detected to appear exclusively at the junctions. (E) For 200 nm, we found the
structures and especially their vertical compressive bars to burst into small pieces. (F) Polymeric honeycomb structures buckle with large plastic deformations.
(G) For 10-nm thick coatings, buckling causes fine networks of surface cracks, leading to vertical crack propagation (compare Movie S4). (J) Thicker-coated
honeycomb designs burst in a brittle manner. (H) Designs C and D buckle globally and fracture without notable plastic deformation for both bare polymeric
structures (compare Movie S3) and coated ones. (I) Reaching 100 nm, we observed cracking of the vertical compressive bars normal to the loading direction
and fracture close to the junctions.

in a brittle manner (Fig. 3J). Truss structures C and D exhibit Fig. 4 shows a so-called Ashby chart (CES EduPack; Granta
local buckling and beginning brittle fracture near the junc- Design Ltd.) for compressive strength vs. density. Compared with
tions at 100-nm layer thickness (Fig. 3I). other materials with a density below 1,000 kg/m3, the presented

Fig. 4. Compressive strength–density Ashby chart showing the cellular ceramic composite materials described in this report compared with other materials
(compare CES EduPack, Granta Design Ltd.). The truss structures A, B, and D outperform all technical foam materials. The optimized honeycomb designs
achieve strength-to-weight ratios comparable to those of technical ceramics and high-strength steels. The nomenclature refers to Fig. 1. Labels indicate the
thicknesses of the deposited alumina layers.

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designs obtain outstanding values. Truss structures A, B, and D
exceed all technical foam materials (31–33). Their specific com-
pressive strength is in the range of bone material and advanced
metallic alloys (1, 32). Designs with a solid material fraction of
only 13% alumina (A and B at 50 nm) already reach the highest
specific strength of pure alumina foam (32, 33). A maximum
compressive strength of 55 MPa at 410 kg/m3 is achieved (D at
200 nm). Shape-optimized honeycomb designs surpass all nat-
ural and technical cellular materials. Specific ratios up to 280
MPa at 810 kg/m3, in the range of technical ceramics and high-
strength steels, not far below bulk alumina, are reached (32).
For a summary of the numerical values, see Supporting In-
formation (Table S1).
Discussion
Macroscopic properties of cellular materials are determined by
both material and structural properties. Reaching the size scale
discussed in this paper, structural characteristics and material
strength are coupled (23).
Based on the strength of the tested honeycomb structures, σ A
estimates the size dependency of the material strength of alu-
mina. The observed behavior (Fig. 2C) is in good agreement with
the considerations of Gao et al. (16), as well as recently pub-
lished effects in hollow ceramic architectures of comparable
dimensions (30), supporting the theory of decreasing flaw size
and size-dependent strengthening below a certain length scale.
Data points in Fig. 2C approximately correlate with the de-
pendency given by Eq. 2. Because buckling before material
failure, multiaxial stress states, and local stress concentrations
are neglected, the estimation may be regarded as conservative.
Before brittle crushing sets in, all designs are expected to frac-
ture initially because of high local tensile stresses (compare Fig.
3G: crack formation due to transversal tension). Therefore, we
expect σ A to depend on the tensile strength rather than repre-
sent the actual compressive strength, especially when coatings
become thinner.
Brittle cellular solids fail when buckling occurs or when local
stresses attain the tensile or compressive strength of the solid (1).
Therefore, buckling always occurs at lower stresses than material
failure (1, 6). The buckling load of a strut is proportional to
EI=l2 , where E is Young’s modulus, I is the second moment of
area, and l is the strut length (6). When the alumina layers be-
come thicker, the modulus, E, of the composite and, I, of the
struts increase. The buckling strengths of the structures improve,
and at a certain point, failure by fracture of the material becomes
dominant.
The observed behavior of the specific strength in relation to
the coating thickness (Fig. 2C) may be explained by the interplay
of mechanical size effects and the failure mode. Within our tests,
the transition from buckling to material fracture (Fig. 3) roughly
correlates with the sections of beginning saturation of the spe-
cific strength. The fraction of alumina in the solid material
increases from only a few percent at 10 nm up to 40% at 200 nm.
Because the specific strength of alumina is much higher than that
of IP-Dip, one would expect the specific strength of the struc-
tures to increase simultaneously. However, when coatings be-
come thinner while still being thick enough to resist buckling,
the observed mechanical size effect compensates for the de-
creasing fraction of alumina in the composite. When the
thickness is reduced further, buckling occurs before material
failure and the specific strength decays.
Microarchitecture allows the presented cellular materials to
benefit from the observed size effect, whereas self-similar mac-
roscopic constructions would be unable to do so. To induce
strong mechanical size effects in ceramics, material thicknesses
are required to be in the range of a few nanometers (16) (compare
Fig. 2C: trend of σ A ). However, buckling tends to dominate the
mechanical behavior for decreasing thickness of the ceramic shell
Bauer et al.
in relation to the diameter of the struts. For a given coating
thickness, further downscaling of the polymeric cores would
improve both the buckling strength and the ratio of alumina to
polymer, allowing more efficient access to the observed strong
increase of the material strength below 50 nm. However, the
minimal producible length scale of architecture is limited by
the lithography process (26).
How efficient a design is in profiting from size effects depends
on the actual architecture. Designing foam topologies as tri-
angular braced frameworks is an expedient way to maximize
stretching-dominated behavior independently of the loading
situation. However, for thicker coatings, we observed design D to
reach higher values of specific strength than the braced truss
structures A and B. A general approach in lightweight design is
to approximate a truss topology corresponding to the orthogonal
network of the acting principal tensile and compressive stresses
(34), as in cancellous bone (5, 6). Although such a structure may
not be triangular at all, it is stretching dominated, because struts
aligned with the principal stress direction experience no bending
moment (6). A construction is most weight efficient when as
many structural elements as possible are oriented in the loading
direction while guaranteeing sufficient structural stability, e.g., by
avoiding slender bars and thin shells under compressive load (6).
Under axial loading, the honeycomb structure attains the highest
ENGINEERING
specific strength, once its walls are thick and stiff enough to resist
buckling, because the entire solid material is aligned in the
loading direction. The braced framework of designs A and B
causes global rigidity and enforces localized failure (compare
Movies S1 and S2), whereas the rigidity of designs C and D
depends on the stiffness of their junctions (8, 11). Those were
observed to behave relatively compliantly when coatings were
thin (compare Movie S3). Acting as elastic–plastic hinges, they
allow global buckling modes that start without rupture or notable
deformation of single struts. With increasing coating thickness,
junctions become stiffer and designs C and D more rigid. When
their resistance to global buckling reaches the range of that of local
buckling or material failure, the benefit of diagonal bracings, as
applied in designs A and B, decreases. Thus, constructions such as
designs C and D, which generally are considered bending domi-
nated (8) may, for a particular load case, behave largely in
a stretching-dominated manner (6) and become more weight
efficient than braced frameworks, once their mechanical be-
havior is not determined by global instability.
Architecture designed on a length scale that allows one to take
advantage of size-dependent material strengthening effects is the
key to developing superior cellular materials. In Fig. 4, all data
points along one line with a slope of 1 (dotted guidelines) have
the same specific strength. The influence of different architec-
tural approaches in relation to the failure mechanism can be
seen clearly. Keeping in mind that structures with thinner coat-
ings actually should have a disadvantageous material composi-
tion compared with thicker-coated ones, but reach the same
values of specific strength, again reflects the impact of the me-
chanical size effect.
A more quantitative description of the relationship among
material composition, failure mode, and attained specific
strength of such composite architectures, as well as the influence
of mechanical size effects, requires detailed modeling and sim-
ulations. In classical foam theory, the slope of a line through one
set of data (compare Fig. 4) allows detection of the governing
failure mechanism, applying the according relations of Gibson
and Ashby (1, 7). However, these relations are not applicable
here, because they require a homogeneous and unvaried base
material. For different coating thicknesses, the presented struc-
tures correspond to bulk materials with different effective
strengths and Young’s moduli and, therefore, cannot be scaled
with the relative or absolute density.
PNAS Early Edition | 5 of 6
Materials and Methods
To manufacture polymeric microarchitectures, we applied the commercial
3D-DLW system Photonic Professional by Nanoscribe GmbH (26), in the Dip-in
Laser Lithography configuration (28). The photoresist IP-Dip (Nanoscribe
GmbH) has been used. The unit cells of designs A, B, and C are 10 μm × 10 μm ×
10 μm. The hexagonal cells of construction D have an edge length of 5 μm
and are 10 μm high. Two different sets of honeycomb structures were ex-
amined, with edge lengths of 3 and 1.5 μm at heights of 10 and 5 μm, re-
spectively. Honeycomb walls and vertical struts have a slightly curved shape
to increase the axial buckling resistance (35). We implemented structural
elements with both rectangular and circular cross-sections. Rectangular
struts are 900–950 nm high and wide, with an edge radius of 190–250 nm.
Circular cross-sections of the vertical struts have diameters of 1,000–1,070
nm near the junctions and maximally 1,550–1,600 nm at the free length.
Honeycomb walls are 580 and 290 nm thick, respectively.
The polymeric structures were homogeneously coated with Al2O3 by ALD
at 90 °C (Savannah 100; Cambridge NanoTech). We deposited layers of 10,
50, 100, or 200 nm nominal thickness (compare Fig. S1). Considering an
approximated densification of up to 15% from liquid to solid, correlating
with the observed shrinkage during development (36), we estimated the
density of solid IP-Dip to be 1,190–1,370 kg/m3 (37). Depending on the purity
(above 99%) and the porosity, that of bulk alumina is between 3,750 and
4,000 kg/m3 (20, 38), whereas ALD layers generally are a little less dense (27).
Based on these values, we calculated the density of all structures using the
design parameters and optical measurements of cross-sections. The tensile
strength of bulk alumina is in the range of 250 MPa (19), and the com-
pressive strength is on the order of 1–3 GPa (1, 20), both strongly dependent
on processing conditions.
For mechanical characterization, we performed loading-rate–controlled
uniaxial in situ and ex situ compression tests by nanoindentation (ex situ:
Nanoindenter G200, Agilent Technologies; in situ: InSEM, Nanomechanics
Inc.) with a diamond flat punch tip 100 μm in diameter (Fig. 2A). Load-dis-
placement curves were recorded. By using the nominal cross-sectional area
and height of the whole structure, engineering stress and strain were
obtained. Compressive strength is defined as the maximum compressive
stress before collapse. We determined Young’s modulus, E, as the maximum
slope in the corresponding stress–strain curve. Nonlinear behavior at low
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strains is the result of varying alignment inaccuracy and the appearance of
small particles in the contact area between the structures and the test setup,
leading to differences from experiment to experiment when the contact
is made.
Based on the test data of the optimized honeycomb structures, we esti-
mated the size dependency of the material strength of alumina. For the
honeycomb structure, it may be assumed that the two materials simply are
loaded in parallel with a uniaxial stress state. The compressive strength σ C of
the polymer–ceramic composite is given by
As
σC = σS , [3]
Ac
where σ S is the compressive strength of the structure, As is the nominal cross-
sectional area, and Ac is the material cross-sectional area. σ C is defined as
σ C = fP σ P + fA σ A , [4]
where σ P and σ A are the stresses at failure inside the polymer and alumina,
respectively, and fP and fA are the corresponding fractions of the loaded
area (compare Fig. S2). For bare polymeric structures, fA is zero and σ P is
equal to σ C , which is roughly 200 MPa (compare Fig. S3). Thus, Eq. 4 may be
written as
σ C − fP σ P
σA = [5]
fA
to calculate σ A . The polymeric core is likely to fail before 200 MPa is reached
when structures are coated with alumina, because the failure strain of IP-Dip
is much higher than that of alumina. However, we decided to base the es-
timate on the maximum value of roughly 200 MPa to avoid an overestimate
of σ A , especially for thinner coatings.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. The authors thank Andreas Frölich (Institute of
Applied Physics) for his support in ALD processing, and Sven Bundschuh
[Institute for Applied Materials (IAM)], Reiner Mönig (IAM), the biome-
chanics department (IAM), and the Institute of Microstructure Technol-
ogy staff (all from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) for their kind assistance.
Financial support by the Robert Bosch Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.
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