Abstract

ABSTRACTVisible light emission from porous silicon has recently been demonstrated by several groups. We have found that annealing of porous silicon samples in an inert atmosphere over 250C reduces the emission intensity, almost fully quenching it by 450C. We believe that this is due to the removal of passivating hydrogen, based on measurements of infrared absorption due to Si-H vibrational modes. We have also found that we can partially recover the emission intensity in these annealed porous silicon layers by passivation in a hydrogen plasma. We have therefore demonstrated that hydrogen passivation is necessary for the observation of visible emission from porous silicon. We have also shown that thermal oxidation of porous silicon over 200C reduces the PL emission. We propose that this reduction is also due to the loss of hydrogen passivation during the oxidation.

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