Surface characterization of porous silicon after pore opening processes inducing chemical modifications

In this paper, we present a study on the porous silicon surface with the aim of filling porous silicon layers with organics. We discuss on two processes used to remove the outer parasitic layer created during the porous silicon formation. We demonstrate that these etching processes influences the surface properties, in particular wetting ability. By XPS and infrared absorption spectroscopy studies, we show that a SF6 plasma treatment does not modify irreversibly the chemistry of porous silicon surface, nor the surface morphology. We also point out that NaOH etching does bring significant morphological modifications and influences the hydrophilicity of the porous silicon surface. This last treatment increases the polar groups (SiO) concentration on the pore surface and therefore allows a better filling of a porous silicon layer with organics, like dibromo-EDOT which can be thermally converted into PEDOT.