ABSTRACT
Porous silicon was first produced by Uhlir [1] and Turner [2] in their studies of electropolishing of silicon in dilute hydrofluoric (HF) solution. It was found that a material consisting of a network of pores could be formed in the dilute hydrofluoric acid in which the current densities were below those for electropolishing. Until recently, the major application of porous silicon was for Si-an-insulator (SOI) technology, where the active devices could be dielectrically isolated by the oxidation of the underlying porous silicon. The formation of this oxide layer was relatively easy in porous silicon, since it contained a large number of internal surfaces, which were highly reactive at elevated temperatures [3].
