Abstract
We report a novel synthesis of porous PbSe layers on Si substrates by anodic electrochemical treatment of PbSe/CaF2/Si(111) epitaxial structures in an electrolyte solution based on glacial acetic acid and nitric acid. Electron microscopy, X-ray diffractometry, and local chemical microanalysis investigation results for the porous layers are presented. Average size of the synthesized mesopores with approximately 1010 cm−2 surface density was determined to be 22 nm. The observed phenomenon of the active selenium redeposition on the mesopore walls during anodic treatment is discussed.
Highlights
There is a new rapidly emerging direction of modern nanotechnology research in the fabrication of porous semiconductor compound materials
Lead selenide (PbSe) layers with island-like morphology (Figure 1a) for the films with flat initial surface were obtained
It became obvious that the main problem for the results discussed above was the undesirably high etch rate of PbSe that did not allow the formation of a developed thick porous layer due to an active material removal
Summary
There is a new rapidly emerging direction of modern nanotechnology research in the fabrication of porous semiconductor compound materials. Such nanostructured materials can be applied in many novel and unique practical applications, such as optoelectronic devices based on the quantum size effects due to the small dimensions of the interpore material, or biomedical compounds based on storing nanoinclusions in the pore volume, and many more. IV-VI materials, in particular lead chalcogenides PbX (X = Te, Se, S), while being extremely useful for thermoelectric and optoelectronic applications [4,5], are not researched at porous form almost at all. While being able to be the first to demonstrate the pore formation in lead chalcogenide layers and study their properties [6,7,8,9], we found out that a
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