Synteris, a Materic company, kicked off the $2 million project in June with collaborators at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)

July 1, 2025 (Baltimore, Md.) – Synteris LLC, a custom manufacturer of carbide and nitride ceramic materials, began work in June on a $2 million R&D effort funded by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Over the two-year project, Synteris aims to enable rapid additive manufacturing of super tough non-oxide ceramics for defense applications.

Synteris is collaborating on this two-year project with ceramics experts at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The project team was among five to receive DARPA awards under the Intrinsically Tough and Affordable Ceramics Today (INTACT) program, which targets advancement of innovative basic or applied research concepts in the technical domain of structural ceramic material development. Synteris is the only small business to be funded through this program.

“It’s incredibly exciting to be working on as challenging and compelling a program as this,” said Stephen Farias, co-founder of Synteris and principal investigator for the DARPA project. “We are advancing the manufacturing and performance of ceramics in ways people didn’t even dream were possible five years ago and turning them into real parts.”

Synteris’ DARPA INTACT project team attended a program kick-off meeting in Arlington, Va. on June 6. Pictured, from left, are Colin Harmer (Materic), Stephen Farias (Synteris), Daniel Flowers (LLNL), Adam Steinmark (Synteris), Nerine Cherepy (LLNL) and Jeff Haslam (LLNL).

Synteris has developed a novel technique for additively manufacturing (3D printing) high-performance ceramic materials, known as Selective Laser Reaction Sintering. The technology, which was spun out of Johns Hopkins University in 2021, enables production of complexly shaped non-oxide ceramics that have exceptional strength and thermal conductivity. These materials are ideal for use in demanding high-energy, high-temperature environments, like power electronics systems or ground and air vehicle frames.

With its DARPA project, Synteris will apply its SLRS method to produce complexly shaped vanadium carbide (VC) ceramics to meet DARPA’s high strength, stiffness, environmental resistance, and fracture toughness specifications.

Synteris is a subsidiary of Materic, an advanced materials manufacturing company headquartered in Baltimore. In addition to ceramics 3D printing, Materic’s production capabilities include nanofiber electrospinning, nanoparticle separation, textile treatments, 3D bioprinting, encapsulation and traditional 3D printing. Materic’s facility has over 28,000 square feet of space to accommodate product development and manufacturing.

“This is a great opportunity for Synteris to showcase its potential in supporting DoD objectives,” said Colin Harmer, CEO of Materic.

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About Synteris:

Synteris, a Materic company founded in 2021, is scaling novel additive manufacturing techniques developed at Johns Hopkins University for the rapid production of high-performance carbide and nitride ceramics. Learn more: https://synteris.com/

About Materic:

Based in Baltimore, Md., Materic custom manufactures advanced materials via nanofiber electrospinning, nanoparticle separation, textile treatments, ceramics 3D printing, 3D bio printing, and encapsulation. Materic’s facility has over 28,000 square feet of space dedicated to product development and manufacturing. Learn more: www.matericgroup.com

Media Contact:

Colin Harmer, CEO of Materic — colin.harmer@matericgroup.com