INSULATING FILMS ON A QUANTUM SEMICONDUCTOR - LIGHT-EMITTING POROUS SILICON

We show that luminescing porous Si is a composite system of a nanometer-sized crystalline Si core and a passivant mantle layer. Although the light emission is superficially similar between the hydrided, oxihydrided and the massively oxidized form of porous Si, we highlight here one distinctive difference - the presence or absence of a particle-size dependence. It is shown that the surface-state model description, which considers energy levels in the interfacial layer, can account for the light emission in both limits.