Raman Piezospectroscopy of Phonons in Bulk 6H-SiC

Raman piezospectroscopy of high quality 6H-SiC crystals is presented. The crystals used in experiments were grown by the seeded physical vapor transport method. Uniaxial stress up to 0.9 MPa, obtained using a spring apparatus, was applied along [11-20] and [10-10] directions. It was found that the application of uniaxial stress led to different energy shifts of the observed phonon excitations in the investigated 6H-SiC crystals. The obtained pressure coefficients vary in the range 0.98-5.5 $cm^{-1}$ $GPa^{-1}$ for different transverse optical phonon modes. For longitudinal optic phonon modes pressure coefficients in the range 1.6-3.6 $cm^{-1}$ $GPa^{-1}$ were found. The data obtained could be useful in evaluation of local strain fields in SiC based structures and devices including epitaxial graphene.