ABSTRACT
The fabrication of silicon nanostructures received a big boost at the beginning of the 1990s, thanks to the discovery of roomtemperature luminescence of the porous silicon obtained by electrochemical and stain etching. Porous silicon was discovered, used, and known by the times of the work of Arthur and Ingeborg Uhlir[1] at Bell Laboratories more than 50 years ago. With the papers of Canham [2],Lehmann, and Gösele [3] at the beginning of
Luca Boarino,a Giampiero Amato,a Emanuele Enrico,a Natascia De Leo,a Federica Celegato,a Marco Coïsson,a Franco Vinai,a Paola Tiberto,a Angelica Chiodoni,b and Michele Lausc aNanoFacility Piemonte, Electromagnetism Division, Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, Strada delle Cacce 91-10135 Turin, Italy bDipartimento di Scienze dei Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24-10129 Turin, Italy cDipartimento di Scienze dell’Ambiente e della Vita, Università del Piemonte Orientale Amedeo Avogadro, Viale Teresa Michel 11-15100 Alessandria, Italy
the 1990s, the proposal of quantum confinement as the responsible of the visible luminescence at room temperature in porous silicon nanostructures, opened new interests and intensive studies started in several directions, from luminescence [4] to gas sensing [5], from micromachining [6] to biosensing [7], photovoltaics [8], electrical [9-10] and thermal transport [11], and many other fields.
