The hierarchy of grain boundary structures in SiC bicrystals

Abstract

The standard geometrical theory having been developed to describe periodically ordered grain boundaries in metals, ie coincidence-site lattice theory faces a new frontier to be expanded in terms of hierarchy of atomic structures in low energy grain boundaries of polytype SiC bicrystals. The unit translation lattice of the polytype crystal is large and elongated in the direction perpendicular to the basal plane. With the elongated translation lattice, the coincidence-site lattice is generally very large. Often too large to be physically significant, although the predictive role of the coincidence-site lattice theory in specifying the orientation of periodically ordered interface was still preserved. Such periodically ordered boundaries were indeed found to occur in the present SiC bicrystals as is predicted by the geometrical theory. A dual description of the grain boundary structure in terms of hierarchy of atomic structures is shown useful in characterizing the bicrystal boundaries.High purity SiC bicrystals were produced by sublimation-deposition method by cooling the encapseled SiC slowly from 2800K.