Preferred Orientation of SiC Nanowires Induced by Substrates

A technique to directly synthesize highly oriented SiC nanowire arrays on single-crystalline SiC substrates was present in this paper. The great impacts of substrate orientation on the growth habits of nanowires were systematically investigated. It has been found that nanowires can grow along the [(1)over bar102] direction or its' equivalent ones on SiC (0001) substrates, while nanowires grow along the [10(1)over bar0] direction or its' equivalent ones on SiC (10(1)over bar0) and (11(2)over bar0) substrates. This technique for the preferred growth of SiC nanostructures can largely improve the quality of SiC nanowire arrays, which have wide applications in the fields of electronic nanodevices, optoelectronic nanodevices, and photocatalytic nanomaterials.