  We investigated the effect of SiC nano-particle doping on the crystal lattice
structure, critical temperature T_c, critical current density J_c, and flux
pinning in MgB_2 superconductor. A series of MgB_{2-x}(SiC)_{x/2} samples with
x = 0 to 1.0 were fabricated using in-situ reaction process. The contraction of
the lattice and depression of T_c with increasing SiC doping level remained
rather small due to the counter-balanced effect of Si and C co-doping. The high
level Si and C co-doping allowed the creation of intra-grain defects and highly
dispersed nano-inclusions within the grains which can act as effective pinning
centers for vortices, improving J_c behavior as a function of the applied
magnetic field. The enhanced pinning is mainly attributable to the
substitution-induced defects and a local structure fluctuations within grains.
A pinning mechanism is proposed to account for different contributions of
different defects in MgB_{2-x}(SiC)_{x/2} superconductors.
