How can I get ceramic composites at a low price?

I am a graduate student at Utah State University. I am currently carrying out my research in solid mechanics at high temperatures, with applications geared towards the aerospace and nuclear industries. We are interested in testing the vibrational response of high temperature composites.

We have never worked with composites before, but my Professor has considerable experience in other high temperature materials.

Our plan at this point is to heat small, rectangular plate-like specimens in open air using induction heating, so C and/or SiC are preferred. The plates would be about the area of an index card, and maybe a millimeter thick. Once at temperature, we plan to vibrate the plates using a mechanical shaker and use digital image correlation to measure the resulting displacements. The exact specimen sizes and testing conditions remain to be determined, but we would prefer for the tests to run at as high a temperature as possible (at least 1000C, and preferably over 1500C).

 Can anybody tell me which type of composite material will be suitable for our research, so that it can sustain a temperature as high as 1500C.  Where can we get such indexed card sized rectangular composite sample with a thickness of about one millimeter?  We want it at a reasonable price, because we contacted with some industries, but their cost is pretty high. Where can we get them at a lower price?

Thanks in advance for your help. I really appreciate it.