Photoluminescent Photonic Devices from Nanostructured Porous Silicon Fabricated Using Lightly Doped Silicon

Abstract

In this work, we report the fabrication of porous silicon multilayers using lightly doped, p-type, silicon wafers (resistivity: 14-22 Ω-cm) by pulsed anodic etching. The optical properties have been found to be strongly dependent on the duty-cycle and frequency of the applied current. Less than 50 % of duty-cycle, at low frequencies, is found to show very rough porous silicon – crystalline silicon (PS-cSi) interface. Use of duty cycle above 50 %, in a certain range of frequencies, is found to make the interface smooth. The optical properties of the photonic devices are investigated for 50 % and 75 % of duty-cycle, for different frequencies in the range of 0-1000 Hz, using the current densities of 10, 90 and 150 mA/cm2. The possibility of fabricating rugate filter with this resistivity is also explored.