Refractive silicon carbides

Refractive indices for several polytypes of silicon carbide have been measured [8-12]. The 6H polytype of SiC has been measured in the most detail [8]. For the hexagonal form the c axis is assumed to be perpendicular to the surface. Thus, a normal incidence wave can be used to measure transmission and/or reflection. This normal incidence wave is often called the ordinary ray. A prism with its sides perpendicular to the c-axis is used to determine both n0 and ne in the normal way (n0 = ordinary ray, ne = extraordinary ray). A short summary of the data is presented here for additional information please refer to [8,9]. 

Moshtaghioun BM, Monshi A, Abbasi MH, Karimzadeh F (2011) A study on the effects of silica particle size and milling time on synthesis of silicon carbide nanoparticles by carbothermic reduction. Int J Refract Metal Hard Mater 29 645-650... 

Jones SC, Robinson MC, Gupta YM (2003) Ordinary refractive index of sapphire in unitixial tension and compression along the c axis. J Appl Phys 93 1023-1031 Balzaretti NM, da Jornada JAH (1996) Pressure dependence of the refractive index of diamond, cubic silicon carbide and cubic boron nitride. Solid State Commun 99 943-948 Balzaretti NM, da Jornada JAH (1996) Pressure dependence of the refractive index and electronic polarizability of LiF, MgF2 and CaF2. J Phys Chem Solids 57 179-182... 

Nonetheless, owing to its temperature stability, dopabUity and widely tunable optical behavior, amorphous SiC doped with hydrogen (a-SiC H) has been investigated for its application in photovoltaic devices. One of several structural renderings of amorphous SiC is shown in Figure 11.9. In this case, the refractive index can be varied from 2.3 to 3.7, and the band gap from 2.4 to 2.0eV, simply by altering a few parameters of the plasma-enhanced CVD technique that is used to deposit an amorphous silicon carbide layer with low defect density onto, for example, a substrate of RSiC. Attention has also been focused on the surface passivation performance of layers deposited on crystalline siUcon. Indeed,... 

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