Effect of Biofield Treatment on Structural and Morphological Properties of Silicon Carbide

What is it about?

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a well-known ceramic due to its excellent spectral absorbance and thermo-mechanical properties. The wide band gap, high melting point and thermal conductivity of SiC is used in high temperature applications. The present study was undertaken to investigate the effect of biofield treatment on physical, atomic, and structural characteristics of SiC powder. The control and biofield treated SiC powder was analysed using X-ray diffraction (XRD), particle size analyzer, surface area analyzer, and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy techniques with respect to control. The XRD pattern revealed that crystallite size was significantly increased by 40% in treated SiC as compared to control. The biofield treatment has induced changes in lattice parameter, density and molecular weight of atoms in the SiC powder. Particle size was increased upto 2.4% and the surface area was significantly reduced by 71.16% in treated SiC as compared to control. The FT-IR results indicated that the stretching vibrations frequency of silicon-carbon bond in treated SiC (925 cm-1) was shifted towards lower frequency as compared to control (947 cm-1). These findings suggest that biofield treatment has substantially altered the physical and structural properties of SiC powder.

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Why is it important?

Ceramics have been used for many years in structural, abrasive and electronics devices; and mostly are metal oxides. However, nowadays new ceramics like nitrides, carbides also grab significant attention due to their unique characteristics, such as high melting point, hardness and excellent mechanical and electronic properties. The silicon carbide (SiC), naturally exists in about 250 crystalline forms [1]. Out of them, two most commonly recognized forms of SiC are: cubic (β-SiC) and hexagonal (α-SiC) (Figure 1). The α-SiC crystalline form exists : 2H-SiC, 4H-SiC, and 6H-SiC as per number of hexagonal layer present in a unit cell; for instance 6H-SiC have six layers [2,3]. In microelectronic devices, and high temperature applications, the energy band gap and electron mobility of SiC plays a crucial role, which are closely associated with its crystal structure, lattice strain, dislocations density and crystallinity [4]. The SiC powders can be synthesized via various processes such as Acheson process (solid state reaction between sand and coke at 2500oC), liquid phase reactions, carbothermal reduction method, physical vapour deposition, pyrolysis, and chemical vapor deposition [5,6]. Most of the above processes require a very high temperature (>1500oC) for better control over particle size, surface area and crystal structure of SiC. Recently, some other techniques such as high energy milling, mechanical alloying (or ball milling), reaction milling also have been employed to control the particle size, surface area and crystal structure parameters [7-9]. The biofield is a cumulative outcome of electric and magnetic field, exerted by the human body [10]. It is generates through some internal dynamic processes such as blood flow, lymph flow, brain and heart function in the human body. Recently, Mr. Trivedi’s biofield has made significant breakthrough in various research areas such as material science [11-18], biotechnology [19,20], microbiology [21-23], and agriculture [24-26]. This biofield treatment had also changed the particle size, surface area and lattice parameters in various ceramic powders such as Vanadium Pentoxide (V2O5), zirconium oxide (ZrO2), and silicon dioxide (SiO2) [16,17]. Based on the knowledge of existing literatures and considering the industrial significance of SiC, in present work an effort has been made to study the impact of biofield treatment on physical and structural properties of SiC.

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