The rapid deployment of 5G and the emergence of 6G technologies have intensified concerns over electromagnetic interference, creating an urgent need for lightweight and highly efficient electromagnetic wave absorbers. However, advances in this field have long been constrained by equilibrium synthesis methods, which generally promote ordered crystal growth, grain coarsening, and smooth interfaces while eliminating the defects and metastable structures that are essential for effective electromagnetic energy dissipation.
Flash Joule heating (FJH) offers a fundamentally different strategy. By delivering high power electrical pulses to precursor materials, FJH generates transient temperatures exceeding 3000 K within milliseconds, followed by ultrafast cooling that locks evolving microstructures into kinetically trapped non equilibrium states. This process retains defect rich lattices, amorphous crystalline hybrid phases, and discontinuous conductive frameworks that cannot be readily obtained through conventional synthesis. As a result, FJH shifts the design philosophy of electromagnetic wave absorbers beyond conventional composition and morphology optimization toward programmable non equilibrium structural engineering.
A comprehensive perspective review published in Nano Research on July 22, 2026 by Shijie Zhang from Henan University of Technology and Guanglei Wu from Qingdao University presents a systematic overview of this emerging field. The authors first develop a unified framework linking transient thermodynamics, defect preservation, interface reconstruction, and strain evolution, highlighting their collective roles in enabling multiple electromagnetic energy dissipation pathways.
The perspective review further illustrates how FJH effectively addresses four longstanding challenges in electromagnetic wave absorber design. Discontinuous conductive networks improve the balance between electrical conductivity and impedance matching, thereby reducing reflection losses. Frozen defects, including vacancies, dislocations, and turbostratic stacking, significantly strengthen polarization loss. Metastable interfaces such as amorphous crystalline boundaries promote stronger interfacial polarization, while nanoscale magnetic disorder together with strain regulated magnetic anisotropy enhances high frequency magnetic loss and extends natural resonance into the X and Ku bands.
Looking forward, the authors propose several promising research directions, including kinetic state programming, non-equilibrium structural genomes, spatiotemporal performance coding, adaptive metamaterials, and artificial intelligence assisted closed loop optimization. By exploiting the fully programmable parameter space of FJH, these approaches have the potential to shift electromagnetic wave absorber development from empirical trial and error toward rational and data driven materials design.
“FJH is not simply an ultrafast heating technique. It enables the direct writing of non-equilibrium states into materials,” Zhang explained. “Through precise control of pulse parameters, we may guide material evolution and preserve transient architectures, allowing electromagnetic functionality to emerge from kinetic pathways instead of equilibrium composition.”
The perspective review concludes that FJH establishes non equilibrium engineering as a transformative paradigm for electromagnetic wave absorbers, marking a transition from conventional materials discovery toward the direct writing of electromagnetic states.”
DOI Link:
https://doi.org/10.26599/NR.2026.94909048
About Nano Research
Nano Research is a peer-reviewed, open access, international and interdisciplinary research journal, sponsored by Tsinghua University and the Chinese Chemical Society, published by Tsinghua University Press on the platform SciOpen. It publishes original high-quality research and significant review articles on all aspects of nanoscience and nanotechnology, ranging from basic aspects of the science of nanoscale materials to practical applications of such materials. After 18 years of development, it has become one of the most influential academic journals in the nano field. Nano Research has published more than 1,000 papers every year from 2022, with its cumulative count surpassing 8,000 articles. In 2025 InCites Journal Citation Reports, its 2025 IF is 9.4 (8.3, 5 years), and it continues to be the Q1 area among the four subject classifications. Nano Research Award, established by Nano Research together with TUP and Springer Nature in 2013, and Nano Research Young Innovators (NR45) Awards, established by Nano Research in 2018, have become international academic awards with global influence.
Nano Research
Flash Joule heating unlocks non-equilibrium engineering for next-generation electromagnetic wave absorbers
22-Jul-2026