With the vigorous development and widespread application of 5-G technology, electromagnetic waves have significantly improved the convenience for humans and society. Meanwhile, electromagnetic wave pollution has attracted extensive concerns, which not only causes distortion of precision instruments but also threatens human health. Therefore, the design and development of efficient electromagnetic wave-absorbing materials have garnered extensive attention from the scientific community. Most researchers have devoted to exploring bifunctional electromagnetic wave-absorbing materials, such as thermal insulation, anti-corrosion (inorganic corrosion) properties, etc, while excellent electromagnetic wave-absorbing materials with antibacterial properties are rarely reported for application in organic corrosion environments.
Recently, the team of material scientists led by Yongqing Wang from Jingdezhen Ceramic University, China reported the implanting Ag nanoparticles in SiOC ceramic nanospheres for exceptional electromagnetic wave absorption and antibacterial performance via liquid phase method. This work not only explains the relationship between atmosphere, phase composition, microstructure, and absorption performance, but also obtains the SiOC/Ag ceramic nanospheres with the minimum reflection loss value of -58.03 dB. Moreover, SiOC/Ag composites also achieve excellent antibacterial ability to E. coli and S.aureus by reactive oxygen species under visible light radiation.
The team published their work in Journal of Advanced Ceramics available online on 05 May, 2025.
"In this report, we synthesized a series of SiOC/Ag with different contents of AgNO3 standard solution through rational control of the heat-treatment temperature and atmosphere" said Junjie Qian, teacher at School of Materials Science and Engineering at Jingdezhen Ceramic University (China), whose research interests focus on the field of electromagnetic wave absorption material.
"Although the electromagnetic wave absorption performance of SiOC ceramic has been considerably improved in previous works, the antibacterial performance of SiOC ceramic is rarely reported" said Junjie Qian.
"The SiOC/Ag composites were fabricated in the Ar atmosphere. a variety of dissipation mechanisms endow SiOC/Ag composites exhibiting excellent electromagnetic wave absorption performance with a RLmin value of 58.03 dB. Moreover, the SiOC/Ag composites show good sterilization by ROS mechanism, which indicates they hold significant potential applications for the coating of medical devices." said Junjie Qian.
However, more delicate research works are still needed to explore the antibacterial activity of SiOC ceramics. In this regard, Qian also put forward several major development directions may be pursued in future works including antiseptic property and oxidation-resistant property.
Other contributors include Dandan Ma, Yunxuan Zou, Lili Zheng, Yan Liang, Shaohua Wang and Xinyi Cheng from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Jingdezhen Ceramic University in Jingdezhen, China; Xiaoling Zhou from the School of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering at Jingdezhen Ceramic University in Jingdezhen, China; Qingliang Shan from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University in Hangzhou, China.
This work was supported by the Science Foundation of Jiangxi Provincial Department of Education (GJJ2400915), Early Career Youth Science and Technology Talent Training Project of Jiangxi Province (20244BCE52206), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (52360018).
About Author
Junjie Qian, Jingdezhen Ceramic University, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Doctor graduated from South China University of Technology in July 2023. In the same year, he joined Jingdezhen Ceramic University, mainly engaged in the preparation and performance research of electromagnetic wave-absorbing materials and precursor ceramics.
Yongqing Wang is a professor of the School of Materials Science and Engineering of Jingdezhen Ceramic University, a Ph.D of South China University of Technology. mainly engaged in the preparation and performance research of ceramic membranes.
About Journal of Advanced Ceramics
Journal of Advanced Ceramics (JAC) is an international academic journal that presents the state-of-the-art results of theoretical and experimental studies on the processing, structure, and properties of advanced ceramics and ceramic-based composites. JAC is Fully Open Access, monthly published by Tsinghua University Press, and exclusively available via SciOpen . JAC's 2023 IF is 18.6, ranking in Top 1 (1/31, Q1) among all journals in "Materials Science, Ceramics" category, and its 2023 CiteScore is 21.0 (top 5%) in Scopus database. ResearchGate homepage: https://www.researchgate.net/journal/Journal-of-Advanced-Ceramics-2227-8508
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