Effect of Particle Size and Lattice Strain on the Debye-Waller Factors of Silicon Carbide Nanoparticles.

Abstract

Nano Silicon Carbide (SiC) particles have been produced by ball milling process. The sample was taken 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 hours of milling. The resulting nanoparticle powders were characterized by X-ray diffraction measurements. The high-energy ball milling of SiC after 50 hours resulted in particle size of about 24 nm. The Debye temperature, mean-square amplitudes of vibration, Debye-Waller factor, particle size, and lattice strain and vacancy formation of energies of SiC nanoparticles prepared by ball mill have been obtained from X-ray integrated intensities. The integrated intensities have been measured with a Philips CWU 3710 X-ray powder diffractometer fitted with a scintillation counter using filtered CuKα radiation at room temperature and have been corrected for thermal diffuse scattering. The X-ray Debye temperatures obtained in the present investigation has been used to estimate the vacancy formation energies for SiC nanoparticles.