REVIEW: OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF SILICON CARBIDE-BASED COMPOSITE MATERIALS

This review provides a comprehensive analysis of the optical properties of silicon carbide (SiC) across various structural forms, from bulk crystals to 0D nanostructures and depending on different parameters and factors. The study systematically evaluates the dependence of SiC's intrinsic optical response on its polytypism, where the indirect band gap is shown to scale with hexagonality from 2.36 eV (3C-SiC) to 3.23 eV (4H-SiC). For thin films and heterostructures, it is observed that processing parameters, such as annealing at 800°C and increasing layer thickness to 250 nm, optimize crystallinity and reduce the absorption coefficient by nearly 20%. At the nanoscale, quantum confinement effects induce a significant blue shift in optical transitions, with band gaps reaching 4.5 eV in 0D quantum dots. The review further details the impact of excitonic binding energies, which reach values of 0.5–1.0 eV in 2D SiC monolayers, highlighting the necessity of GW+BSE many-body corrections for accurate optical modeling over standard DFT methods. Finally, the investigation of SiC nanofluids reveals a 150% enhancement in solar absorption efficiency and 98% long-term durability, confirming SiC as a robust candidate for direct absorption solar collectors. The work concludes by identifying current gaps between theoretical predictions and experimental validation, emphasizing the need for integrated modeling in future SiC-based photonic research.

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