The aviation industry in the last few decades has been revolutionised with the advent of new materials and technologies. However, today’s world drives on developing even more robust, efficient and sustainable structures. In view of this, the aviation industry strives to improve the efficiency of jet engine, the powerhouse of an aircraft. The efficiency of a jet engine is governed the turbine inlet temperature. SiC_f/SiC composites are an improvement over the traditional Ni based superalloys, as structural materials for jet engines, because of their higher operating temperature capabilities. However, in combustive environments, these composites undergo rapid recession on reacting with water vapour by forming gaseous silicic acid. Water vapour resistant environmental barrier coatings (EBCs) protect SiC_f/SiC composites under such hostile working conditions. Ytterbium silicate EBCs deposited via conventional route like air plasma spraying (APS), undergo phase separation on deposition and are also susceptible to crystallization-induced cracking. These shortcomings were addressed in the present work by adopting slurry spraying-reactive sintering technique for fabricating functionally multilayered ytterbium silicate EBCs. The coating architecture consists of an inner layer of ytterbium disilicate (Yb₂Si₂O₇), penultimate layer of ytterbium monosilicate (Yb₂SiO₅) and the outermost layer of ytterbia (Yb₂O₃). Each layer plays its individual role in this functionally multilayered architecture, especially with respect to CTE and water vapour resistance. For achieving such microstructure, Yb₂O₃ based slurry was sprayed on silicon (bond coat material) and heat treated in air for promoting silicate forming reactions between SiO₂ and Yb₂O₃. The interplay between a number of parameters involved in the fabrication process such as solvent selection, solid loading, stand-off distance, sintering temperature and time was studied. While keeping other parameters constant, two different kinds of Yb₂O₃ powder feedstocks (micrometer sized and nanoparticles) were used for depositing ~250 mm thick, homogeneous coatings. On sintering the coatings at 1400°C for 10 hours, SEM-EDS confirmed the presence of Yb₂Si₂O₇ and Yb₂SiO₅ at the interface as two distinctive layers for both kinds of feedstock powders. However, a significant improvement in the sintered density was observed on using nanoparticles. Also, Yb₂O₃ nanoparticles quickly reacted with SiO₂ and formed a dense uniform layer of silicates throughout the interface, unlike the coatings made by using micrometer size powder where the silicates formed at isolated places. The sintered coatings were then exposed at 1300, 1350 and 1400°C for 3, 6, 12, 25 and 50 hours in static air for studying the growth of silicates. It was observed that the silicates densified with increasing holding temperature and time while the multi-layered architecture was maintained throughout. Raman spectroscopy was used in conjunction with EDS data for an insight into the phase formation mechanism. It is worth noting that no metastable phases such as X1-Yb₂SiO₅, α-Yb₂Si₂O₇ and apatite were observed in the microstructure across all the heat treatments. Raman analysis confirmed the silicate phases to be X2-Yb₂SiO₅ and β-Yb₂Si₂O₇. The successful development of functionally multilayered EBCs in the present work validates this approach as a novel, facile, and economical coating deposition technique.