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Routes of Formation for Porous Silicon

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Handbook of Porous Silicon

Abstract

This updated review summarizes, from a chronological perspective, how about 40 distinguishable fabrication routes have been developed to create different types of porous silicon. Porous silicon has been fabricated by both “top-down” techniques from solid silicon and “bottom-up” routes from silicon atoms and silicon-based molecules. Over the last 50 years, electrochemical etching has been the most developed approach for chip-based applications and has been utilized to create highly directional mesoporosity (pore diameters in the range 2–50 nm) and macroporosity (pore diameters >50 nm). Recently, chemical conversion of porous or solid silica using magnesium vapor has received much attention for applications that require inexpensive mesoporous silicon in powder form. Very few techniques are currently available for creating wholly microporous silicon with pore size below 2 nm.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, B15 2TT, Birmingham, Worcestershire, UK

    Leigh Canham

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  1. Leigh Canham
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Correspondence to Leigh Canham .

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  1. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, Worcestershire, United Kingdom

    Leigh Canham

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Canham, L. (2018). Routes of Formation for Porous Silicon. In: Canham, L. (eds) Handbook of Porous Silicon. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71381-6_1

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