In this research, structural, magnetic and microwave absorption properties of multifunctional nanoFe(3)O(4)@carbon fibers (CFs) composites in the frequency range of 8.2-18 GHz were investigated. The nano-Fe3O4 particles (30 nm) were successfully prepared using co-precipitation method. These particles were then deposited on CFs using two conventional and modified multi-step electrophoretic deposition (EPD) processes to investigate the contributing effects of uniformity of coating on their magnetic and microwave absorption properties. The magnetic properties measurements represented that the coercivity (H-c), saturation magnetization (M-s) and residual magnetization (M-rs) values of the coated CFs using the conventional EPD process were 531.4 Oe, 15.2 emu/g and 5.2 emu/g, respectively, while for the CFs coated with modified EPD process these values were 167.8 Oe, 33.1 emu/g and 1.7 emu/g, respectively. It was found that by employing conventional EPD process, the maximum reflection loss (RL) of -9.87 dB was obtained for the composite containing 20 wt.% nano-Fe3O4@CFs and 80 wt.% epoxy-resin with the thickness of 2 mm, while by using the modified multi-step EPD process, due to enhancement of deposited coating quality, the achieved maximum RL was approximately increased by -0.64 dB and reached to -10.51 dB with an effective absorption bandwidth of about 4 GHz for the similar sample with the same thickness and weight ratio of nano-Fe3O4@CFs composites to epoxy 828. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.