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Thermal Etching and Grain‐Boundary Grooving Silicon Ceramics
Author(s) -
ROBERTSON WAYNE M.
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
journal of the american ceramic society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.9
H-Index - 196
eISSN - 1551-2916
pISSN - 0002-7820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1151-2916.1981.tb09550.x
Subject(s) - materials science , grain boundary , grain boundary diffusion coefficient , silicon carbide , silicon nitride , activation energy , etching (microfabrication) , silicon , effective diffusion coefficient , ceramic , crystallite , polycrystalline silicon , diffusion , carbide , metallurgy , mineralogy , composite material , chemistry , thermodynamics , microstructure , layer (electronics) , medicine , physics , magnetic resonance imaging , radiology , thin film transistor
Polished polycrystalline specimens of Si, Sic, and Si 3 N 4 were heated to high temperatures and the rate of thermal etching was measured. Grain‐boundary grooving occurred on silicon by surface diffusion, with a surface‐diffusion coefficient given bySilicon carbide surfaces became extremely rough and very little grain‐boundary grooving occurred. Silicon nitride decomposed in an N 2 ‐H 2 , atmosphere with an activation energy of 757 kJ/mol, which was very near the activation energy calculated from thermochemical data. The surfaces became fairly rough but grain‐boundary grooves formed by an evaporation processsimilar to that for decomposition.