Investigation of passivation of porous silicon at room temperature

A practical oxidizing technique with ozone has been developed for the passivation of porous silicon (PS) at room temperature. The fundamental role of ozonization may be attributed to the strong oxidizing process for the Si-Hx species and dangling bonds. The subsequent 158 days' aging effect with the presence of absorbed ozone molecules is very effective for the oxidizing process. At last we achieve a complete replacing Si-Hx coverage with Si-Ox film and Si-alkyl film. The steady increase of photoluminescence (PL) intensity is assigned to the increase in the barrier's height efficiency and the increase in quantum confinement effect for the silicon nanocrystallites. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd