Silicon Carbide Nanowires

Abstract

Silicon Carbide nanowires are studied for the interesting properties of the material coupled with the unique features of quasi-one-dimensional nanostructures. The bulk synthesis of silicon carbide has been gaining increasing attention not only for the mechanical uses of the material, but also for the electronic properties. The efficiency of silicon carbide electronic devices was low because of the poor crystalline quality and, in addition to that, no synthesis method to obtain silicon carbide nanostructures were known. Epitaxy is a well-established technique used to grow films over a substrate, and it is commonly used also for silicon carbide deposition. The microfabrication methods are well established for silicon, and they allowed to obtain short gate length MOSFET using silicon nanowires, but silicon carbide has a strong resistance to chemical etching, and plasma etching is not straightforward as well. The excellent biocompatibility of silicon carbide encouraged many research groups to focus on biomedical applications.