Luminescent small-diameter 3C-SiC nanocrystals fabricated via a simple chemical etching method

Up to now, it is still a great challenge to obtain bulk quantities of luminescent 3C-SiC nanocrystals with sizes smaller than 10 nm, which have quantum confinement effect. We report in this paper on the fabrication of 3C-SiC nanocrystals via a chemical etching of microscale 3C-SiC grains and ultrasonic vibration. The sizes of the as-prepared 3C-SiC nanocrystals are smaller than 6.5 nm and have a centric distribution with the maximal probability of 3.6 nm. Due to the quantum confinement effect, the suspension of the 3C-SiC nanocrystals exhibits a tunable photoluminescence (PL), which is visible with the naked eye. As the excitation line increases from 260 to 480 nm, the PL peak position changes from 420 to 512 nm. Spectral analysis and microstructural observations show that the chemical etching leads to the formation of a weakly interconnected nanostructure network in the large 3C-SiC grains and subsequent ultrasonic vibration crumbles the interconnected network, forming small-size 3C-SiC nanocrystals.