Monolithic ceramics have helped shape the modern world, forging major technologies from cell phones to turbo chargers. But there is a key downside to these materials: their brittleness.

Most monolithic ceramics exhibit failure mechanisms that tend to be both sudden and catastrophic. In contrast, ceramic matrix composites (CMCs), which consist of a network of fibers or aggregates infiltrated with a ceramic matrix, can offer many of the same benefits as monolithic ceramics but with the addition of some ductility (Figure 1).