Stereolithographically 3D Printed SiC Metastructure for Ultrabroadband and High Temperature Microwave Absorption

Abstract Broadband microwave absorption is essential on the realms of electromagnetic compatibility and protection in civil application scenarios. However, coordination of material and structure is difficult without proper iterative design between material and structure resulting in insurmountable drawbacks of traditional microwave absorption medium operating under high temperature erosion. Herein, SiC metastructure is manufactured in bulk by stereolithographic 3D printing. The dielectric loss tangent of SiC sintered body is over 0.5 and up to 1.5 at most showing good electromagnetic energy dissipation properties. The optimized SiC metastructure with complicated suspended features achieves −10 dB broadband microwave absorption from 6.96 to 40 GHz at room temperature (RT) across total frequency range of 33.04 GHz. The proposed SiC metastructure is able to endure in situ 1000 °C and ex situ 1600 °C erosion in air atmosphere maintaining −10 dB effective bandwidth in 4.54–40 and 10.89–39.67 GHz, respectively. Broadband microwave absorption under oblique incidence from 0° to 60° is also achieved in a wide temperature range from RT to 1600 °C. The densification of SiC results in a high mechanical strength of 217.36 MPa for structural load bearing applications. The intrinsic electromagnetic variation of SiC under different temperature is relaxed and adapted to the metastructure design. The functions of broadband microwave absorption and high temperature protection are integrated into one metastructure.