Characterization of thermal properties of porous silicon film/silicon using photoacoustic technique

We have applied photoacoustic (PA) technique to study the thermal properties of porous silicon (PS) films formed on p-type Si substrates by electrochemical anodic etching. Four PS samples with close thicknesses but greatly different porosities (from 20 to 60%) were examined. From the dependences of the PA signals on the modulation frequency of excitation light measured under a transmission detection configuration (TDC), effective thermal diffusivities for the two-layered PS/Si samples were determined and found to decrease greatly from 0.095 to 0.020 cm(2) s(-1) as the porosity increased from 20 to 60%.