Experimental study of n-type porous silicon obtained under illumination

Porous silicon (PS) has been prepared from n-type (100) silicon substrate by using electrochemical etching under He-Ne laser illumination. The PS was produced within several etching conditions. The morphological, structural and optical properties were studied by using atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman analysis, and reflectance measurements. Results show that the evolution of the obtained nanostructures is strongly related to anodization conditions. The optical analysis results show that a low reflectance was obtained for samples anodized by increasing current density. This is correlated to morphological results showing the strong dependence of the obtained nanoporous structure in terms of crystallites sizes and porosity, on the anodization conditions.