Luminescence of porous silicon in a weak confinement regime

Abstract

We report on luminescence properties of porous silicon emitting efficient light only a few tens of meV above the band gap of bulk Si. This emission band has a well-defined low-energy limit coincident with the position of the lowest possible luminescing exciton state of bulk silicon. The resonant photoluminescence spectrum exhibits all possible combinations of zero-phonon and momentum-conserving TA- and TO-phonon assisted absorption and exciton emission processes known for bulk silicon. We found that TO-phonon assisted processes give a major contribution to the light emission. We discuss the implications of these studies for the understanding of the origin of porous silicon photoluminescence.