Porous Silicon: Morphology and Formation Mechanisms

Abstract

Porous silicon (PS) is a material formed by anodic dissolution of single crystalline silicon in HF containing solutions. Since its discovery more than four decades ago, a large number of investigations have been undertaken, the results of which revealed that PS has extremely rich morphological features and the formation process of PS is a very complex function of numerous factors.1 Accordingly, many theories have been proposed on the various mechanistic aspects on formation and morphology of PS. Figure 1 is a summary of the progress of research on PS with respect to the discovery of major PS features and development of theories.