Synthesis of β-SiC nanowires by ball milled nanoparticles of silicon and carbon

•The β-SiC nanowires were synthesized only use milled Si and C nanoparticles.•No catalyst was used in this process.•The grown mechanism of β-SiC nanowires is nanoparticles self-assembly and solid–solid reaction.•This notion, together with the nanowires synthesis are expected to apply opens up other semiconductor nanomaterials.

In the present investigation, we report a simple and new technique to synthesize silicon carbide nanowires by high energy ball milling of silicon and carbon powders followed by annealing at elevated temperatures. The detailed structural analysis was carried out by X-ray diffraction, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and FT-IR analysis. Nanocrystalline silicon particles were detected to be covered by amorphous carbon after milling. This typical structure was transformed to β-SiC nanowires during annealing by new growth mechanism. The β-SiC nanoparticles were found to be self-assembled one by one and formed a curly chain, and then rotated gradually in accordance to the same crystal orientation along the β-SiC [1 1 1] direction.