Investigation of Al droplet wetting behavior on highly-oriented SiC

RSC Adv. 2023 Sep 7;13(38):26869-26878. doi: 10.1039/d3ra03335j. eCollection 2023 Sep 4.

Abstract

In the integrated circuit industry, metal liquids are frequently in contact with chemical vapor deposited (CVD) SiC, and it is important to understand the interactions between CVD-SiC and metal droplets. In this study, the wetting behavior of Al on a highly oriented SiC surface was investigated, and the contact angle could be controlled from 6° to 153° at a wetting temperature (Twet) of 1573-1773 K; the obtained contact angle range was larger than that of polycrystalline silicon carbide (Twet = 873-1473 K, 9-113°) and single crystal silicon carbide (Twet = 873-1473 K, 31-92°). The presence of many dislocations at the Al/SiC interface increased the interfacial energy, resulting in a greater contact angle for Al on the 〈111〉-oriented SiC coating surface than on the 〈110〉 one.