Porous silicon as a promising material for photonics

Abstract

Electrochemical etching – a usual technique in nanotechnology – creates porous silicon with novel and useful properties. The considerable and controllable changes in the electronic structure and refractive index of porous silicon make it a promising material for photonics in comparison with bulk silicon. In this paper, we review as well as report on some interesting and unique properties of porous silicon material. In studying porous silicon as a low-dimensional material, we focus on the effect of the surface passivation of silicon nanocrystals on photoluminescence characteristics of such zero-dimensional crystals. As an optical material, we demonstrate the fabrication method and optical properties of the planar waveguide as well as the active waveguide and optical interference filters operated in infrared wavelengths. In addition, we investigated the effect of energy transfer from silicon nanocrystals to erbium ions in the erbium-doped porous silicon waveguide and also elaborate on the origins of the difference between the reflectivity spectra from fabricated filters and that of the simulation program.