Fabrication of Ni@SiC composite nanofibers by electrospinning and autocatalytic electroless plating techniques

•Nickel-coated SiC nanofibers were fabricated by electrospinning and autocatalytic electroless plating.•In situ formed NiO acts as active seeds to catalyze the nickel reduction reaction.•Uniform nickel layer with a thickness of 60 nm were obtained.•The influence of reaction temperature and deposition time was investigated. In this work, nickel-coated silicon carbide (Ni@SiC) nanofibers were successfully fabricated via electrospinning and autocatalytic electroless plating techniques. The in situ formed nickel oxide (NiO) seeds on the surface of SiC nanofibers were applied to catalyze the plating reaction instead of expensive palladium. The quality of nickel layer was determined by the reaction temperature, deposition time and NiO content in the fibers. After electroless plating for 2 h at 70 °C, the thickness of nickel layer was 60 nm and the average diameter of composite nanofibers was 610 nm. The volume density of the obtained Ni@SiC fibrous membrane was measured to be 1.3 g cm−3. Such composite fibrous membranes with uniform nickel coating and interconnected pore structure possess potential applications as catalysts, supercapacitor and shielding materials.