Scandium nitride (ScN) is a binary III-Vindirect bandgapsemiconductor. It is composed of the scandiumcation and the nitrideanion. It forms crystals that can be grown on tungsten foil through sublimation and recondensation.[1] It has a rock-salt crystal structure with octahedral bonding coordination. It exhibits lattice constant of 0.451 nm and an indirect bandgap of 0.9 eV and direct bandgap of 2 to 2.4 eV.[1][2] These crystals can be synthesized by dissolving nitrogen gas with indium-scandium melts, magnetron sputtering, Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE), HVPE and other deposition methods.[2][3] Scandium nitride is also an effective gate for semiconductors on a silicon dioxide (SiO2) or hafnium dioxide (HfO2) substrate.[4] Scandium nitride is the first nitride semiconductor reported to be synthesized without an active Nitrogen plasma source using the Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) technique. It exhibits a scavenging effect, in which scandium at the growth front dissociates molecular nitrogen and incorporates it into the lattice.[5] Scandium nitride can be potentially used in thermoelectric materials as a semiconducting layer in epitaxial single-crystalline metal/semiconductor superlattices for thermoelectric, plasmonic and thermophotonic applications, and as a substrate material for high-quality GaN-based devices and other solid-state applications.[6]
References
12Gu, Zheng; Edgar, J H; Pomeroy, J; Kuball, M; Coffey, D W (August 2004). "Crystal Growth and Properties of Scandium Nitride". Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics. 15 (8): 555–559. doi:10.1023/B:JMSE.0000032591.54107.2c. S2CID98462001.
↑Zhang, Guodong; Kawamura, Fumio; Oshima, Yuichi; Villora, Encarnacion; Shimamura, Kiyoshi (4 August 2016). "Synthesis of Scandium Nitride Crystals from Indium–Scandium Melts". International Journal of Applied Ceramic Technology. 13 (6): 1134–1138. doi:10.1111/ijac.12576.
↑Yang, Hyundoek; Heo, Sungho; Lee, Dongkyu; Choi, Sangmoo; Hwang, Hyunsang (13 January 2006). "Effective Work Function of Scandium Nitride Gate Electrodes on SiO2 and HfO2". Japanese Journal of Applied Physics. 45 (2): L83–L85. Bibcode:2006JaJAP..45L..83Y. doi:10.1143/JJAP.45.L83. S2CID121206924.
