Assessment of low-cost alternative charcoal-based furnace in fabricating silicon carbide (SiC) nanostructures

Abstract

The unavailability of specialized materials and equipment often hinders effective teaching and learning of materials science, especially on nanotechnoligy. In this study, we fabricated and assessed silicon carbide nanomaterials from silica gel + graphite (SG+G) and quartz sand + coconut shells (QS+CS) samples using a low-cost alternative charcoal-based (LCACB) furnace. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results showed that the SG+G sample contain nanoparticles with average diameter size of 82.42 nm together with a long strand with a diameter of 41.183 nm; and the QS+CS sample contain nanoparticles with average diameter size of 244.23 nm together with a long strand with 62.55 nm diameter size. The EDS results showed that both samples contain a high amount of carbon which indicate the significant contribution of the carbon sources in the samples, and it also revealed a low silicon content for both samples which suggest that the silicon carbide fabrication was not entirely successful. However, the overlapping EDS images of silicon and carbon in both samples indicate the potential presence of SiC.