title: Wetting behavior of water on silicon carbide polar surfaces.
abstract: Technically important wide band-gap semiconductors such as GaN, AlN, ZnO and SiC are crystallized in polar structures. Taking SiC as an example, we investigate the effect of surface polarity on the wetting behavior by water using experiments and molecular dynamic simulations. It is found that the contact angle (CA) of deionized water on the carbon-face (C-face) is significantly larger than that on the silicon-face (Si-face) for both 6H-SiC and 4H-SiC, while the CA of tetrachloromethane is almost the same on these two faces. This finding clearly indicates that polar interactions between water and SiC induce such a large difference in the CA. Extensive molecular dynamics simulations suggest that a larger CA on the C-face than that on the Si-face is resulted from the different charge agglomeration on the two faces. These results will not only be helpful in improving the state of the art processes such as rinsing and wet etching in device fabrication, but also offer a reliable method to determine the polarity of SiC crystals quickly, simply, accurately and nondestructively, which is easily extendable for the measurement of other polar crystals.
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. xlchen@iphy.ac.cn smeng@iphy.ac.cn and Department of Materials, Taizhou University, Taizhou 318000, China.
authors.forename: W W
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Zhong
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. xlchen@iphy.ac.cn smeng@iphy.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Y F
authors.initials: YF
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. xlchen@iphy.ac.cn smeng@iphy.ac.cn.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gan
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. xlchen@iphy.ac.cn smeng@iphy.ac.cn.
authors.forename: J Y
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. xlchen@iphy.ac.cn smeng@iphy.ac.cn.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. xlchen@iphy.ac.cn smeng@iphy.ac.cn.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. xlchen@iphy.ac.cn smeng@iphy.ac.cn and Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. xlchen@iphy.ac.cn smeng@iphy.ac.cn and Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: X L
authors.initials: XL
authors.lastname: Chen