Temperature-dependent infrared optical properties of 3C-, 4H- and 6H-SiC

Abstract

The temperature-dependent optical properties of cubic (3C) and hexagonal (4H and 6H) silicon carbide are investigated in the infrared range of 2–16 μm both by experimental measurements and numerical simulations. The temperature in experimental measurement is up to 593 K, while the numerical method can predict the optical properties at elevated temperatures. To investigate the temperature effect, the temperature-dependent damping parameter in the Lorentz model is calculated based on anharmonic lattice dynamics method, in which the harmonic and anharmonic interatomic force constants are determined from first-principles calculations. The infrared phonon modes of silicon carbide are determined from first-principles calculations. Based on first-principles calculations, the Lorentz model is parameterized without any experimental fitting data and the temperature effect is considered. In our investigations, we find that the increasing temperature induces a small reduction of the reflectivity in the range of 10–13 μm. More importantly, it also shows that our first-principles calculations can predict the infrared optical properties at high-temperature effectively which is not easy to be obtained through experimental measurements.