[Wonder Warthog]

"A plasma deposited surface coat on a supportive material would do wonders for stretching a limited resource."

There are many indications that this is indeed the preferred configuration. The substrate is, in many cases, a zirconium oxide bead. Deposition method may not necessarily be "plasma", but definitely a thin layer.

[Kevmo]

Do you think it’s a surface effect or a bulk effect? I remember seeing a couple of studies that used sintered metal as the lattice. One thing that sintering does is to incrase the surface area.