Probing Carrier Transport in Porous Silicon with Synchrotron Radiation

Abstract

In this paper we demonstrate that photo-electron emission excited by X-UV synchrotron radiation can be used as a “contactless” probe of the gross conduction processes in porous silicon. Moreover we demonstrate that this approach reveals the underlying conduction geometry. We show that conduction in porous silicon is to some degree controlled by percolation phenomena and finally present data which support the notion that the fundamental blocking process may be Coulomb Blockade [P.A. Lee, Physica B 189, 1–5 (1993); D. Ali and H. Ahmed, Appl. Phys. Lett. 64, 2119–2120 (1994)].