Photoluminescence studies on porous silicon/polymer heterostructure

Hybrid devices formed by filling porous silicon with MEH-PPV or poly [2-methoxy-5(2-ethylhexyloxy-p-phenylenevinylene)] have been investigated in this work. Analyses of the structures by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) demonstrated that the porous silicon layer was filled by the polymer with no significant change of the structures except that the polymer was infiltrated in the pores. The photoluminescence (PL) of the structures at 300 K showed that the emission intensity was very high as compared with that of the MEH-PPV films on different substrates such as crystalline silicon (c-Si) and indium tin oxide (ITO). The PL peak in the MEH-PPV/porous silicon composite structure is found to be shifted towards higher energy in comparison with porous silicon PL. A number of possibilities are discussed to explain the observations.