Raman investigation of defective SiC nanocrystals

Phonon confinement effect and surface optical mode in SiC nanocrystal have been investigated through Raman spectroscopy. Considering high density of stacking faults in SiC grains, the correlation length of RWL (proposed by Richter, Wang, Li to explain phonon confinement in nano silicon) model is determined as a distance between nearby stacking faults. Thus, homogeneous region becomes thin slices in cylindrical SiC grains, which redefines weighting function. Effect of anisotropy of phonon dispersion curve is also analyzed during calculation. The additional 875-cm(-1) band is attributed to defects and amorphous SiC, which is confirmed by transmission electron microscopy. SiC grains are approximated as column array with grain boundary substances regarded as surrounding medium, which explains surface optical phonon mode at 915cm(-1). Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.