Ultra-high strain in epitaxial silicon carbide nanostructures utilizing residual stress amplification

Ultra-high strain in epitaxial silicon carbide nanostructures utilizing residual stress amplification

Strain engineering has attracted great attention, particularly for epitaxial films grown on a different substrate. Residual strains of SiC have been widely employed to form ultra-high frequency and high Q factor resonators. However, to date, the highest residual strain of SiC was reported to be limited to approximately 0.6%. Large strains induced into SiC could lead to several interesting physical phenomena, as well as significant improvement of resonant frequencies. We report an unprecedented nanostrain-amplifier structure with an ultra-high residual strain up to 8% utilizing the natural residual stress between epitaxial 3C-SiC and Si. In addition, the applied strain can be tuned by changing the dimensions of the amplifier structure. The possibility of introducing such a controllable and ultra-high strain will open the door to investigating the physics of SiC in large strain regimes and the development of ultra sensitive mechanical sensors.

This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Appl. Phys. Lett. 110, 141906 (2017) and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4979834.