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Compressive elastic behavior of single-crystalline 4H-silicon carbide (SiC) nanopillars

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Abstract

As a wide-bandgap semiconductor, 4H-SiC is an ideal material for high-power and high-frequency devices, and plays an increasingly important role in developing our country’s future electric vehicles and 5G techniques. Practical applications of SiC-based devices largely depend on their mechanical performance and reliability at the micro- and nanoscales. In this paper, single-crystal [0001]-oriented 4H-SiC nanopillars with the diameter ranging from ~200 to 700 nm were microfabricated and then characterized by in situ nanomechanical testing under SEM/TEM at room temperature. Loading-unloading compression tests were performed, and large, fully reversible elastic strain up to ~6.2% was found in nanosized pillars. Brittle fracture still occurred when the max strain reached ~7%, with corresponding compressive strength above 30 GPa, while in situ TEM observation showed few dislocations activated during compression along the [0001] direction. Besides robust microelectromechanical system (MEMS), flexible device and nanocomposite applications, the obtained large elasticity in [0001]-oriented 4H-SiC nanopillars can offer a fertile opportunity to modulate their electron mobility and bandgap structure by nanomechanical straining, the so called “elastic strain engineering”, for novel electronic and optoelectronic applications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, China

    SuFeng Fan, XiaoCui Li, Rong Fan & Yang Lu

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, China

    Yang Lu

  3. Nanomanufacturing Laboratory (NML), Center for Advanced Structural Materials (CASM), City University of Hong Kong Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, 518057, China

    Yang Lu

Authors
  1. SuFeng Fan
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  2. XiaoCui Li
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  3. Rong Fan
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  4. Yang Lu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yang Lu.

Additional information

This work was supported by Hong Kong Research Grant Council (RGC) (Grant No. U11207416), City University of Hong Kong (Grant No. 7005234), and National Natural Science Foundation of China under the Excellent Young Scientists Fund (Grant No. 11922215).

Supplementary Information

Fig.S1

The fully recoverable loading-unloading compression straining of another single crystalline 4H-SiC pillar sample with same [0001] orientation. Four times loading-unloading tests are performed, and the fully recoverable elastic strain reaches up to 6.3%. The pillar finally failed with 6.6% fracture strain. The red solid lines indicated the compression amount by taking the indenter edge as the reference and red dash lines were used to calculate the conservative compressive strain.

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Supplementary material, approximately 233 KB.

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Fan, S., Li, X., Fan, R. et al. Compressive elastic behavior of single-crystalline 4H-silicon carbide (SiC) nanopillars. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 64, 37–43 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-020-1678-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-020-1678-6

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