Structure and optical properties of porous SiC film grown by magnetron sputtering on porous anodic aluminium oxide template

Abstract

Porous fluorescent SiC films were deposited by magnetron sputtering (MS) using porous anodic aluminium oxide (AAO) template. In the first step AAO was carefully placed on the Si substrate and then coated with SiC film using magnetron sputtering at the deposition temperature of 873K for different times. The pore diameter, pore spacing and thickness of the double pass porous AAO template were 300, 450 and 500 nm, respectively. The SiC film deposited for 60min showed macroporous structure with the pore size of 200 to 250 nm and pore spacing of 450 nm. The photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of the porous SiC film ranged from 400 to 700 nm. The band gap of SiC is 2.305 eV, and the phonon energy of phonon participating in PL of SiC is estimated at 0.075 eV. The source of phonon participating in PL of SiC may be from phonon scattering of silica/SiC interface in porous SiC film. The porous AAO template assisted magnetron sputtering is a promising technical processing for the fabrication of macroporous fluorescent SiC film.