Low-temperature synthesis of SiC nanowires with Ni catalyst

SiC nanowires were fabricated on the silicon substrate dipped with a layer of Ni catalyst at 900 °C by gas pressure annealing processing. The morphologies and crystal structures were determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results show that the as-synthesized nanowires are β-SiC single crystalline with diameter range of 50–100 nm, and length of tens of micron by directly annealing at 900 °C. The SiC nanowires grow along the [111] direction with highly uniform morphology. And the possible growth mechanism of SiC nanowires is proposed. The present work provides an efficient strategy for the production of high-quality SiC nanowires.