In today's predominant silicon based technology, a lot of research is carried out in using various silicon based matrices especially for new, efficient and reduced cost solar cells. This has led to a deep research into third generation silicon based thin film solar cells that consist of nanostructures. In this respect, a variety of silicon based host matrices have been investigated for solar cell applications including silicon dioxide and silicon nitride. Recently, interest has been extended to silicon carbide (SiC) because of its lower band gap (2.5 eV) as compared to SiO2 (9eV) and Si3N4 (5.3eV), in order to favor better electrical conductivity. This paper reports the initial works carried out on silicon carbide based thin films, where in, optical and structural properties of the film were investigated. These results would be useful in carrying out further research on the fabrication of Si nanostructures in SiC based matrix which is a challenge in today's research scenario.
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