SiC nanowires: material and devices

Abstract

Abstract. SiC nanowires are of high interest since they combine the physical properties of SiC with those induced by their low dimensionality. For this reason, a large number of scientific studies have been dedicated to their fabrication and characterization as well as to their application in devices. SiC nanowires growth involving different growth mechanisms and configurations was the main theme for the large majority of these studies. Various physical characterization methods have been employed for evaluating SiC nanowire quality. Very low diameter (<10 nm) nanowires as well as nanowires free of planar defects have not been demonstrated and these are some of the main challenges. Another issue is the high unintentional doping of the nanowires that does not allow the demonstration of high performance field effect transistors using SiC nanowires as channel material. On the other hand, the grown nanowires are suitable for field emission applications and to be used as reinforcing material in composite structures as well as for increasing the hydrophobicity of Si surfaces. All these aspects are examined in detail in the different sections of the present paper.

Silicon carbide- from synthesis to application: a review

“…It has a wide range of industrial applications [24] which plays a major role in high voltage, temperature and frequency semiconductor device applications.…”

Thermoelectric properties of silicon carbide nanowires with nitride dopants and vacancies

“…10,14,40,41 As a typical model for simulation, we choose the ultrathin 3C-SiCNWs with a diameter of 1.1 nm and a hexagonal cross section to investigate their structural and thermoelectric properties. As shown in Fig.…”

“…Owing to its wide bandgap and low intrinsic carrier concentration, the semiconducting behavior of SiC can be kept at temperatures much higher than the case of Si, thus resulting in a higher operation temperature tolerance for SiC nanodevices. 10 Considering also the fact that an effective recovery of waste heat from vehicle exhaust requires an operating temperature about 350…”

“…As early as in 2003, Yoshida et al have successfully doped N and B into 300 µm thick SiC film that contains Si and C vacancies, and observed that with N dopants, the power factor of the SiC film is raised nearly one order of magnitude at 973 K. 12 For SiC nanowires (SiCNWs), the techniques of fabrication 10 and measurements 13 have been remarkably improved recently, and theoretical analyses on structural properties, 14 mobility, 15 thermal conductivity, 16 etc., were also carried out for a few cases. These studies suggest that it is prospective to obtain nice thermoelectric performance on SiCNWs.…”

Pairwise correlations in layered close-packed structures

“…With the recent realization of the technological import of many materials prone to stacking faults -graphene (Castro Neto et al, 2009;Geim & Grigorieva, 2013) and SiC (Zekentes & Rogdakis, 2011) being but two well known examples -that interest has only grown. Since stacking faults shift an entire layer of atoms, it is not unexpected that they can profoundly affect material properties.…”