Photoluminescence of ~2Â nm 3C-SiC quantum dots fabricated from polycrystalline 6H-SiC target by pulsed laser ablation

Up to now, it is still a great challenge to obtain Bulk quantities of 3C-SiC quantum dots (QDs) with uniform size. In this paper, ~2 nm 3C-SiC QDs were fabricated by pulsed laser ablation on 6H-SiC polycrystalline target immersed in de-ionized water. The QDs exhibit violet-blue photoluminescence (PL) emission as excited at the wavelength of 260-420 nm. The strongest PL emission is excited at the wavelength 260 nm, and centered at 413 nm. The dependence of PL intensity and peak position on the excitation wavelength confirms that the QDs with the diameter of ~2 nm are in the majority and the QDs are 3C-SiC.