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Effect of defects on graphitization of SiC

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Abstract

Epitaxial graphene and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) grown on SiC have shown big potential in electronics. The motivation to produce faster and smaller electronic devices using less power opened the way to a study of how to produce controlled epitaxial graphene and CNTs on SiC. Since defects are among the important tools to control the properties of materials, the effects of defects on the carbon formation on SiC have been analyzed. In this study, the effects of defects on the carbon formation on SiC have been analyzed. We produced carbon films on the surface of four different SiC materials (polycrystalline sintered SiC disks, single crystalline SiC wafers, SiC whiskers, and nanowhiskers) by chlorination and vacuum annealing with the goal to understand the effects of surface defects on the carbon structure and the SiC decomposition rate. We have shown that grain boundaries, dislocations, scratches, surface steps, and external surfaces may greatly enhance the reaction rate and affect the final structure of carbon derived from SiC.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Solar Atmosphere for the vacuum furnace and Intrinsic Semiconductor Corp. for SiC wafers; Centralized Research Facility of Drexel University for providing access to microscopes and spectrometers used in this study and Dr. K.L. Vyshnyakova, Institute for Problems of Materials Science, and Dr. V.G. Lutsenko, Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry, National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine, for providing SiC whiskers. This work at Drexel University was supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (Grant No. DE-FG02-07ER46473).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Cankaya University, Ankara, Turkey

    Göknur Cambaz Büke

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA

    Gleb Yushin

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104, USA

    Vadym Mochalin & Yury Gogotsi

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  1. Göknur Cambaz Büke
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  2. Gleb Yushin
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  4. Yury Gogotsi
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Correspondence to Göknur Cambaz Büke.

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Büke, G.C., Yushin, G., Mochalin, V. et al. Effect of defects on graphitization of SiC. Journal of Materials Research 28, 952–957 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2012.396

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2012.396

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