Electrochemical grafting of diazonium salts on silica-terminated versus H-terminated silicon

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Diazonium salts are one of the most widely used molecules for functionalising electrode surfaces, due to their high reactivity toward a range of different electrodes but have mostly been studied on carbon and gold. Recent work has demonstrated that diazonium salts can be reduced on silica-terminated silicon (Si/SiOx) despite silica (SiOx) being an electrically insulating material, but this interesting phenomenon was only demonstrated on one specific crystal orientation, Si(111) using specific diazonium salts molecules – a more complete understanding of the electrochemical properties of these silica-terminated silicon electrodes remains unclear. In this work, we develop a thorough understanding of the reduction of diazonium compounds on silica-terminated silicon using silicon with different crystal orientation and using nano-structured silicon surfaces that are chemically etched to simultaneously expose different crystal orientations. A comparison between the reduction process on oxide free silicon (Si–H) and silica-terminated Si is then made to reveal the effect of the crystal orientation (amorphous vs crystalline) and the insulating nature of the distal surface (Si‒H vs SiOx) on the reduction process. Results show that diazonium salts form, well-packed thin films on silica-terminated silicon regardless of the crystal orientation of the silicon. The rate of diazonium reduction was found to be sensitive to the crystal orientation of Si only when the diazonium salts are in direct contact with the crystal plane (i.e. in contact with Si–H) as opposed to when there is a thin layer of native amorphous oxide material in between. The reduction rate is sufficiently slow on silica-terminated silicon that at slow scan rates, the system reaches a steady state current and become diffusion controlled. This is not observed on oxide-free silicon electrodes which are observed to be governed by a kinetically driven mechanism. These findings deepen our understanding of the electrochemical activity of silica-terminated silicon surfaces which are widely used in solar cells, electronics, chemical and biosensors.