Kinetics of porous silicon growth studied using flicker-noise spectroscopy

The mechanism of the formation of porous silicon (PS) is studied using flicker noise spectroscopy (FNS), a new phenomenological method that allows us to analyze the evolution of nonlinear dissipative systems in time, space and energy. FNS is based on the ideas of deterministic chaos in complex macro- and microsystems. It allows us to obtain a set of empiric parameters (“passport data”) which characterize the state of the system and change of its properties due to the evolution in time, energy, and space. The FNS method permits us to get new information about the kinetics of growth of PS and its properties. Thus, the PS formation mechanisms at n-Si and p-Si, as revealed using the FNS, seem to be essentially different. p-Si shows larger “memory” in the sequence of individual events involved in PS growth than n-Si (if anodized without light illumination). The influence of the anodization variables (such as current density, HF concentration, duration of the process, light illumination) onto the “passport data...