3C-SiC on Si: A Versatile Material for Electronic, Biomedical and Clean Energy Applications
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3C-SiC on Si: A Versatile Material for Electronic, Biomedical and Clean Energy Applications C.L Frewin, M. Reyes, J. Register, S. W. Thomas and S. E. Saddow University of South Florida, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., Tampa, FL 33620, USA Abstract Silicon carbide (SiC) has long been known as a robust semiconductor with superior properties to silicon for electronic applications. Consequently a tremendous amount of international activity has been on-going for over four decades to develop high-power solid state SiC electronics. While this activity has focused on the hexagonal polytypes of SiC, the only form that can be grown directly on Si substrates, 3C-SiC (or cubic SiC), has been researched for non-electronic applications such as MEMS and biosensors. In particular in our group we have pioneered several biomedical devices using 3C-SiC grown on Si substrates, and recently have been investigating the use of this novel material for clean energy applications. This paper first reviews progress made in the area of 3C-SiC electronic devices. Next a review of nearly a decade of biomedical activity is presented, with particular emphasis on the most promising applications: in vivo glucose monitoring, biomedical implants for connecting the human nervous system to advanced prosthetics, and MEMS/NEMS research aimed at allowing for in vivo diagnostic and therapeutic systems for advanced biomedical applications. Recent published work in the area of hydrogen production via electrolysis using 3C-SiC closes the paper as this last application is extremely promising for the burgeoning hydrogen economy and demonstrates a third important application of 3C-SiC on Si – its potential use in clean energy systems.
Introduction Cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC) has not been normally considered for power applications due to its lower band gap (2.3 eV) than 4H- and 6H-SiC (3.2 and 3.0 eV, respectively), but it has found applications in the fabrication of micro-electromechanical machine (MEMS) devices, as it can be grown heteroepitaxially on silicon. Our epitaxial growth process on 100 mm Si substrates has previously reported using a hot-wall chemical vapor deposition (CVD) reactor with silane and ethylene precursors [1]. The amorphous form of SiC (a-SiC) can be deposited using different techniques, most of which are familiar to the materials community, such as sputtering, pulsed laser deposition, and evaporation, among others [2, 3]. The advantage of a-SiC is that it can be deposited at low temperatures, which allows for the coating of plastics and other lowtemperature materials, such as polymers [4]. These two forms of SiC are ideal for use in biomedical devices as they encompass a cost-effective processing approach which allows for the synthesis of thin films with less expensive materials, like silicon and polymers, instead of using bulk hexagonal SiC substrates. In this paper, we will not only detail the development of 3C-SiC and a-SiC for biomedical devices, but will specifically discuss continuous glucose monitoring and n
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