Thermal annealing studies of the photoluminescence (PL) intensity and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy have been performed concurrently on porous Si. A sharp reduction in the PL intensity is observed for annealing temperatures ≳300 °C and this coincides with desorption of hydrogen from the SiH2 surface species. A brief etch in HF can restore the luminescence of the samples annealed below 400 °C. We conclude that SiH2 is essential to the visible luminescence in porous Si.

Some preliminary observations of the rapid thermal oxidation of porous silicon, and the rapid thermal nitriding of oxidized porous silicon

Recent observations of visible, room-temperature photoluminescence in porous Si have stimulated research aimed at the realization of efficient, Si-based electroluminescent devices. To achieve electroluminescence, it may be beneficial to generate carriers with sufficient energy to populate the states of the quantum-confined Si structures. A viable method to accomplish this is to utilize a wide-band-gap heterojunction injector, such as GaP. Toward that end, we report the successful formation of porous Si buried underneath GaP islands, and we demonstrate that the buried porous Si layer exhibits strong photoluminescence (λ≊7000 Å).