MECHANISM AND SIMULATION OF UNIFORM NANOWIRES OF POROUS SILICON GROWTH ON p-Si SUBSTRATE

Abstract

An extension of Beale's and Lehman's model for the formation of porous silicon (PS) layer on p-type substrate is proposed with a view to explain the experimental conditions necessary for obtaining either uniform vertical pores or nonuniform pore branching. A uniformity parameter is defined and correlated with the measured porosity. On the basis of this model, a Monte Carlo simulation algorithm for PS growth has been proposed. The dependence of the porosity, uniformity factor and layer thickness with various formation parameters of PS layer has been studied experimentally. Good agreement between the experimental results and simulation has been found and reported in this paper. Conditions leading to uniform vertical PS growth are predicted from this simple model.