Structural, chemical and morphological of porous silicon produced by electrochemical etching

Abstract EN

In this paper, the Nan crystalline porous silicon (PS) films is prepared by electrochemical etching of p-type silicon wafer with different currents density (15 and 30 mA/cm2) and etching times on the formation Nano-sized pore array with a dimension of around few hundreds Nano metric.

The films were characterized by the measurement of XRD, FTIR spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy properties.

We have estimated crystallites size from X-Ray diffraction about Nano scale for porous silicon and Atomic Force microscopy confirms the Nano metric size Chemical fictionalization during the electrochemical etching show on surface chemical composition of PS.

The etching possesses inhomogeneous microstructures that contain a-Si clusters (Si3–Si–H) dispersed in amorphous silica matrix and (O-SiO, C-SiO).

From the FTIR analyses showed that the Si dangling bonds of the as-prepared PS layer have large amount of Hydrogen to form weak Si–H bonds.

The atomic force microscopy investigation shows the rough silicon surface, with increasing etching process (current density and etching time) porous structure nucleates which leads to an increase in the depth and width (diameter) of surface pits.

Consequently, the surface roughness also increases.