I am working a new type of pan... it will crush both steel and cast iron. I am drawing on my experience as a materials engineer working in aerospace, including applications that get much hotter than what you'll find in your kitchen.
I am talking to manufacturers and will be building a limited trial batch of a few that will available for purchase. I already offered them for $615 on Twitter and I will stick to that, even though I realized with the polishing step, they will probably retail for closer to $1k. Looking for 1-2 more people who are interested.
The premise is cast iron outer, with a THICK, embedded upper layer that is a polished, extremely thermally diffusive ceramic material (usually, "ceramic" means powder in thing layer of plastic, or thin coating that will chip). Total weight will be similar to cast iron.
Cast iron beats stainless steel primarily due to 3x higher thermal diffusivity. This will multiply that by another 3x, while having 7x the radial heat spreading speed. The durability should be excellent, and the bullet resistance par none.