Study of the Electrochemical Dissolution of Silicon in Fluoride Media

Abstract

The anodic dissolution of silicon in fluoride media has been subject of many investigations through the last forty years. One of the main products that results from the anodic dissolution of silicon in fluoride media is the formation of porous silicon. The recent investigations have mostly focussed on the regime of porous silicon formation, which is encountered at moderate potentials, that is to say near the onset of the anodic current flowing. The physical properties of porous silicon are studied to prove that porous silicon is an important candidate for many applications. Luminescence applications as LEDs fabrication, photodetectors, optical waveguides and antireflection coating in solar cell applications are all applications in which porous silicon participate. The prospect of securing visible photoluminescence from a porous silicon based structure brings researches one step closer to directly integrating optical and electronic devices on a single silicon substrate.

There are three main objectives of this work. First is to design and implement a complete computer controlled experimental setup to characterize the silicon-electrolyte interface that results from the anodic dissolution of silicon in fluoride media. Second is to prepare a series of porous silicon samples and study the different parameters that affect its formation. Third is to complete the characterization step by introducing the first behavioral model of the I-V characteristic of the silicon-electrolyte interface using a hardware descriptive language (HDL).