Preparation and characterization of SiC fibers with diverse electrical resistivity through pyrolysis under reactive atmospheres

Due to their fantastic mechanical and high-temperature resistant properties, SiC fibers with electrical resistivity of different orders of magnitude are of great interest for the fabrication of advanced composites with electromagnetic wave absorbent performance as both structural and functional materials. On the basis of well-developed route to prepare SiC fibers, in this work, we demonstrated a facile strategy to fabricate SiC fibers with electrical resistivity of 10(-1)-10(6) Omega cm by simply employing hydrogen and ammonia as the reactive atmospheres. The SiC fibers with different electrical resistivity had favorable morphologies, with uniform elemental distribution and stable C/Si ratio towards the fiber interior. Moreover, these fibers exhibited excellent mechanical strength and high temperature performance. Due to the innovative strategy, convenient operation and scalable preparation, the method in this work can be further extended to prepare SiC base fibers with adjustable electrical resistivity from other precursors. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.