Electroluminescence of heavily doped p-type porous silicon under electrochemical oxidation in the potentiostatic regime

Abstract

Visible light emission is obtained during the anodic oxidation of heavily doped p-type porous silicon layers, with similar characteristics to the electroluminescence observed on lightly doped substrates. This indicates that the coarser structure of the heavily doped layers also presents a thinner structure, with crystallites of quantum sizes responsible for the emission. In this paper, the electroluminescence is studied in potentiostatic conditions, under either fixed or scanned potentials. Some reversibility in the spectral changes versus potential variations can be evidenced by selecting correctly the scanning conditions and the potential values. The results allow one to conclude that the electroluminescence spectral evolution is mostly determined by the applied polarisation and can be attributed to the selectivity of the carriers injection into the quantum-size crystallites of the material. The electroluminescence vanishing which is observed in the second part of the anodic oxidation regime seems related in the higher potential range to some depassivation of the porous silicon surface. For the lower potential range, owing to the oxide growth, the emission stops when the polarisation is no longer enough to inject holes into the confined crystallites.