Silicon carbide history

The history and development of polysilane chemistry is described. The polysilanes (polysilylenes) are linear polymers based on chains of silicon atoms, which show unique properties resulting from easy delocalization of sigma electrons in the silicon-silicon bonds. Polysilanes may be useful as precursors to silicon carbide ceramics, as photoresists in microelectronics, as photoinitiators for radical reactions, and as photoconductors. 

Many body potentials e.g. Sutton-Chen, Tersoff, " Brenner can be used to describe metals and other continuous solids such as silicon and carbon. The Brenner potential has been particularly successful with fullerenes, carbon nanotubes and diamond. Erhart and Albe have derived an analytical potential based on Brenner s work for carbon, silicon and silicon carbide. The Brenner and Tersolf potentials are examples of bond order potentials. These express the local binding energy between any pair of atoms/ions as the sum of a repulsive term and an attractive term that depends on the bond order between the two atoms. Because the bond order depends on the other neighbours of the two atoms, this apparently two-body potential is in fact many-body. An introduction and history of such potentials has recently been given by Finnis in an issue of Progress in Materials Science dedicated to David Pettifor. For a study of solid and liquid MgO Tangney and Scandolo derived a many body potential for ionic systems. 

The form that silicon carbide takes depends on many factors including thermal history, impurity type and level, and environment. The p form is generally felt to be the stable phase at low temperatures, whereas the a form is the high-temperature form. There are many exceptions to the rule, as the conversion to a from /3 and the converse have been reported. The stability and transformations of the various polytypes vary among themselves and constitute a subject that is too broad for this effort. The basic a and p descriptors will be used for the remainder of this section. 

Various potential applications of nanoSIMS in characterization of solids have already been recognized. Though the technique seems to be promising in cosmochemical analysis, its real application is still limited due to the strong isobaric interference. However, nanoSIMS is a more flexible alternative for elements that are ionized easily (Hoppe et al. 2004 Marhas et al. 2003) when compared with RIMS or TIMS. Hoppe et al. (2004) of MPl for Chemistry, Mainz, reported the measurement of extinct A1, Mn, and Fe in meteoritic minerals formed early in solar system history. They also measured extinct Ti and and s-process Ba in pre-solar silicon carbide grains of supernova origin. 

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