Porous Silicon - New Luminescent Material or Luminescent Defect?

Abstract

The recent topic of visible luminescent porous Si is reviewed with an emphasis on luminescent mechanism. Among various mechanisms proposed, size quantization plays some important role and is experimentally observable but it would not be a key entity which emits visible light in dispute. The role of oxygen is found to be very important and this is a key constituent for the luminescent substance. A possible mechanism of localized electron-hole pair recombination nature for porous Si involving oxygen is discussed.