Effect of van der Waals interactions on the stability of SiC polytypes

Density functional theory calculations with a correction of the long-range dispersion force, namely the van der Waals (vdW) force, are performed for SiC polytypes. The lattice parameters are in good agreement with those obtained from experiments. Furthermore, the stability of the polytypes in the experiments, which show 3C-SiC as the most stable, are reproduced by the present calculations. The effect of the vdW force on the electronic structure and the stability of polytypes are discussed. We observe that the vdW interaction is more sensitive to the cubic site than the hexagonal site. Thus, the influence of the vdW force increases with decreasing the hexagonality of the polytype, which results in the confirmation that the most stable polytype is 3C-SiC.