Theoretical study of the thermodynamic stability and electronic structure of thin films of 3C, 2H, and 2D silicon carbides

Silicon carbide is among the most common materials used in semiconductor engineering. Silicon carbide thin films are attractive from the standpoint of designing devices based on heterojunctions. This is due to a characteristic feature of this compound, such as polytypism, leading to the difference in the physical properties and also hampering the preparation of high-quality material samples. In this work, the thermodynamic stability and electronic structure of thin films based on the polytypes 3C, 2H, and 2D with a thickness of a few nanometers have been studied.