Porosity-dependent fractal nature of the porous silicon surface

Journal Article · Wed Jul 15 04:00:00 EDT 2015 · AIP Advances

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4926460· OSTI ID:22493935

Rahmani, N.

Porous silicon films with porosity ranging from 42% to 77% were fabricated by electrochemical anodization under different current density. We used atomic force microscopy and dynamic scaling theory for deriving the surface roughness profile and processing the topography of the porous silicon layers, respectively. We first compared the topography of bare silicon surface with porous silicon and then studied the effect of the porosity of porous silicon films on their scaling behavior by using their self-affinity nature. Our work demonstrated that silicon compared to the porous silicon films has the highest Hurst parameter, indicating that the formation of porous layer due to the anodization etching of silicon surface leads to an increase of its roughness. Fractal analysis revealed that the evolution of the nanocrystallites’ fractal dimension along with porosity. Also, we found that both interface width and Hurst parameter are affected by the increase of porosity.

• OSTI ID: 22493935
• Journal Information: AIP Advances, Journal Name: AIP Advances Journal Issue: 7 Vol. 5; ISSN AAIDBI; ISSN 2158-3226
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
ANODIZATION
ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOPY
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
CURRENT DENSITY
ELECTROCHEMISTRY
ETCHING
FILMS
FRACTALS
INTERFACES
LAYERS
NANOSTRUCTURES
POROSITY
POROUS MATERIALS
ROUGHNESS
SILICON
SURFACES