Electron beam-physical vapor deposition of SiC/SiO 2 high emissivity thin film

Abstract

When heated by high-energy electron beam (EB), SiC can decompose into C and Si vapor. Subsequently, Si vapor reacts with metal oxide thin film on substrate surface and formats dense SiO 2 thin film at high substrate temperature. By means of the two reactions, SiC/SiO 2 composite thin film was prepared on the pre-oxidized 316 stainless steel (SS) substrate by electron beam-physical vapor deposition (EB-PVD) only using β-SiC target at 1000 °C. The thin film was examined by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), grazing incidence X-ray asymmetry diffraction (GIAXD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), backscattered electron image (BSE), electron probe microanalysis (EPMA), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier transformed infra-red (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The analysis results show that the thin film is mainly composed of imperfect nano-crystalline phases of 3C-SiC and SiO 2, especially, SiO 2 phase is nearly amorphous. Moreover, the smooth and dense thin film surface consists of nano-sized particles, and the interface between SiC/SiO 2 composite thin film and SS substrate is perfect. At last, the emissivity of SS substrate is improved by the SiC/SiO 2 composite thin film.