ABSTRACT
It is relatively easy in today’s silicon semiconductor integrated circuit technology to manufacture more than 1 billion devices onto one single chip. This mature technology has followed the wellknown Moore’s law for decades, but further scaling down of device dimensions may require a “more than Moore” rather than “more of Moore” approach (Kent and Prasad 2008). The “more than Moore” approach entails the integration of additional nonelectronic functionality onto the chips. These functionalities may include photonic, mechanical, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices, as well as biological interfaces, for example, micro fluidic structures. For these new functionalities to be accepted in the microelectronics environment, the technological impact on the current well-established microchip fabrication technology should be as low as possible. Several decades after the discovery of the porous silicon (PSi) electrochemical etch technique (Uhlir 1956), new possibilities arose in terms of innovative compatible functionalities, one of which is the utilization of PSi as an energetic material.
