When heated by high-energy electron beam (EB), SiC can decompose into C and Si vapor. Subsequently, Si vapor reacts with metal oxide thin film on substrate surface and formats dense SiO2 thin film at high substrate temperature. By means of the two reactions, SiC/SiO2 composite thin film was prepared on the pre-oxidized 316 stainless steel (SS) substrate by electron beam-physical vapor deposition (EB-PVD) only using beta-SiC target at 1000 degrees C. The thin film was examined by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), grazing incidence X-ray asymmetry diffraction (GIAXD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), backscattered electron image (BSE), electron probe microanalysis (EPMA), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier transformed infra-red (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The analysis results show that the thin film is mainly composed of imperfect nano-crystalline phases of 3C-SiC and SiO2, especially, SiO2 phase is nearly amorphous. Moreover, the smooth and dense thin film surface consists of nano-sized particles, and the interface between SiC/SiO2 composite thin film and SS substrate is perfect. At last, the emissivity of SS substrate is improved by the SiC/SiO2 composite thin film. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.