With the rapid advancement of aerospace, electronic information, and wireless communication technologies, electromagnetic pollution and interference have become increasingly severe, creating an urgent demand for lightweight, broadband, and highly efficient electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorbing materials. Silicon carbide (SiC) ceramics are considered promising candidates due to their outstanding thermal stability, corrosion resistance, and mechanical robustness. However, conventional SiC ceramics generally exhibit insufficient dielectric loss and poor impedance matching, making it difficult to simultaneously achieve lightweight design, strong microwave attenuation, and broadband absorption. Overcoming this trade-off remains a major challenge for the development of next-generation SiC-based EMW absorbers.
To tackle this challenge, a research team led by Prof. Bingbing Fan from Zhengzhou University, China, developed a novel polymer-derived ceramic strategy by integrating electrospinning with the polymer-derived ceramics (PDC) route. Using polycarbosilane (PCS) as the molecular precursor, the researchers precisely engineered the precursor composition and pyrolysis conditions to construct lightweight SiC-based fibrous ceramic membranes featuring a balanced multiphase architecture of β-SiC, SiOxCy, and free carbon. This rational phase design effectively reconciles impedance matching and dielectric loss, offering a new pathway toward high-performance broadband EMW absorbing ceramics for extreme-environment applications.
The team published their work in Journal of Advanced Ceramics on July 10, 2026.
"Our key innovation is the precise regulation of phase evolution through molecular precursor design and pyrolysis control. Rather than pursuing a single-phase SiC ceramic, we constructed a balanced multiphase architecture composed of β-SiC, SiOxCy, and free carbon, which simultaneously optimizes impedance matching and dielectric loss," said Prof. Bingbing Fan from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Zhengzhou University. "The optimized ceramic membrane achieved a minimum reflection loss of −27.12 dB and an effective absorption bandwidth of 8.22 GHz, demonstrating outstanding broadband microwave absorption with a lightweight structure."
"The electrospun three-dimensional fibrous network further enhances microwave attenuation by promoting multiple reflections and scattering of electromagnetic waves. Combined with heterogeneous interfaces, structural defects, and a moderately conductive carbon network, the material efficiently dissipates electromagnetic energy while maintaining excellent impedance matching," Prof. Fan explained.
"This work establishes a clear composition-structure-property relationship for polymer-derived SiC fibrous ceramics and provides a new strategy for designing lightweight, broadband electromagnetic wave absorbing materials. These ceramic membranes show great promise for applications in aerospace, stealth technology, high-temperature electronics, and electromagnetic protection in extreme environments," Prof. Fan added.
Other contributors include Gaoang Huang, Defang Zu, Xuewen Jiang, Mengru Li, Wei Li, Limeng Song, Fan Zhang, Hailong Wang, Rui Zhang from Zhengzhou University in Zhengzhou, China; Yu Chen from Department of Materials, Design and Manufacturing Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Liverpool in Liverpool, UK; Yanqiu Zhu from Department of Engineering, Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy, University of Exeter, UK.
This work was financially supported by the Henan Province Major Science and Technology Project (261100320100), Zhongyuan Thousand Talents Program - Leading Talents in Science and Technology Innovation (264200510043), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52572086 and 52502079), the Key Research and Development Project of Henan Province (251111232100), Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowships 2025 Round 1 (RSWVF/25/R1/1008), Natural Science Foundation of Henan (242300421009), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2024M760816).
About Author
Bingbing Fan is currently a professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering in Zhengzhou University, China. She received her Ph.D. degree from Zhengzhou University/City University of Hong Kong. She mainly engages in the research of for high-temperature microwave sintering materials, electromagnetic wave absorption materials. She has published more than 110 papers in peer-reviewed international journals with citations ca 5000 times. She also serves as vice editor-in-Chief of Journal of Advanced Ceramics.
DOI: 10.26599/JAC.2026.9221349
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 2025 IF is 14, ranking in Top 1 (1/34, Q1) among all journals in "Materials Science, Ceramics" category, and its 2025 CiteScore is 24.6 (6/133) in Scopus database. ResearchGate homepage: https://www.researchgate.net/journal/Journal-of-Advanced-Ceramics-2227-8508
