Giant Piezoresistance in B-Doped SiC Nanobelts with a Gauge Factor of -1800

Xiaoxiao Li; Fengmei Gao; Lin Wang; Shanliang Chen; Bei Deng; Lang Chen; Chun-Ho Lin; Weiyou Yang; Tom Wu

doi:10.1021/acsami.0c13800

Giant Piezoresistance in B-Doped SiC Nanobelts with a Gauge Factor of -1800

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2020 Oct 21;12(42):47848-47853. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c13800. Epub 2020 Oct 8.

Authors

Xiaoxiao Li^{1

2}, Fengmei Gao¹, Lin Wang¹, Shanliang Chen¹, Bei Deng³, Lang Chen³, Chun-Ho Lin⁴, Weiyou Yang¹, Tom Wu⁴

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Materials, Ningbo University of Technology, Ningbo City 315211, P.R. China.
² School of Material Science and Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan 250061, P.R. China.
³ Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 14325, P.R. China.
⁴ School of Material Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.

PMID: 32990424
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c13800

Abstract

The giant piezoresistance effect (PRE) of semiconductors as featured by a high gauge factor (GF) is recognized as the prerequisite for realizing optimal pressure sensors with desired high sensitivity. In this work, we report the discovery of giant PRE in SiC nanobelts with a record GF measured using an atomic force microscope. The transverse piezoresistance coefficient along the [111] direction reaches as high as -312.51 × 10^-11 pa^-1 with a corresponding GF up to -1875.1, which is twice more than the highest value ever reported on SiC nanomaterials. The first-principles calculations reveal that B doping turns the acceptor states in the bandgap into deeper impurity levels, which makes the major contribution to the observed giant piezoresistance behavior. Our result provides new insights on designing pressure sensors based on SiC nanomaterials.

Keywords: B doping; SiC; gauge factor; giant piezoresistance effect; nanobelts.