• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.29-34
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• 2019

Silicon carbide is considered to be a potentially useful material for high-temperature electronic devices, as its large energy band gap and the p-type and/or n-type conduction can be controlled by impurity doping. Particularly, electric conductivity of porous n-type SiC semiconductors fabricated from ${\beta}-SiC$ powder at $2000^{\circ}C$ in $N_2$ atmosphere was comparable to or even larger than the reported values of SiC single crystals in the temperature region of $800^{\circ}C$ to $1000^{\circ}C$, while thermal conductivity was kept as low as 1/10 to 1/30 of that for a dense SiC ceramics. In this work, for the purpose of decreasing sintering temperature, it was attempted to fabricate porous reaction-sintered bodies at low temperatures ($1400-1600^{\circ}C$) by thermal decomposition of polycarbosilane (PCS) impregnated in n-type ${\beta}-SiC$ powder. The repetition of the impregnation and sintering process ($N_2$ atmosphere, $1600^{\circ}C$, 3h) resulted in only a slight increase in the relative density but in a great improvement in the Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity. However the power factor which reflects the thermoelectric conversion efficiency of the present work is 1 to 2 orders of magnitude lower than that of the porous SiC semiconductors fabricated by conventional sintering at high temperature, it can be stated that thermoelectric properties of SiC semiconductors fabricated by the present reaction-sintering process could be further improved by precise control of microstructure and carrier density.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.55-60
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• 2022

In this study, a heat treatment experiment was conducted to select a new melt composition that can easily control the unintentionally doped nitrogen (N-UID) without degrading the SiC single crystal quality during TSSG process. The experiment was carried out for about 2 hours at a temperature of 1900℃ under Ar atmosphere. The used melt composition is based on either Si-Ti 10 at% or Si-Cr 30 at%, and also Co or Sc transition metals, which are effective for carbon solubility, were added at 3 at%, respectively. After the experiment, the crucible was cross-sectionally cut, and evaluated the Si-C reaction layer on the crucible-melt interface. As a result, with Sc addition, Si-C reaction layers uniformly occurred with a Si-infiltrated layer (~550 ㎛) and a SiC interlayer (~23 ㎛). This result represented that the addition of Sc is an effective transition metal with high carbon solubility and can feed carbon sources into the melt homogeneously. In addition, Sc is well known to have low reactivity energy with nitrogen compared to other transition metals. Therefore, we expect that both growth rate and Nitrogen UID can be controlled by Si-Sc based melt in the TSSG process.