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Porous Silicon and its Nanoparticles: A Theoretical Study

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 International Journal of
Applied Nanotechnology
eISSN: 2455-8524 (Online)
Vol. 5: Issue 1
www.journalspub.com

Porous Silicon and its Nanoparticles: A Theoretical Study

Binoy Bera
Department of computer science and engineering, West Bengal University of Technology,
Kolkata – 700064, India

ABSTRACT
It is very simple and cost consuming technique of fabrication of porous silicon film over
silicon substrate and synthesizing the porous silicon and silicon nanoparticles. The etch
reactions in RIVPSE process forms the porous structures without need of complex and
expensive equipments. The luminescent porous film can be fabricated using this sample
technique with any cost effecting methods such as extra energy excitation like plasma or
ultraviolet photon and additional surfactants. Porous silicon retains the key semiconductor
properties of silicon and is a machinable at a micro level. Porous silicon also demonstrates
optical properties that provide the basis for a variety of potential devices for bio-degradable
and bio-compatible diagnostics products. During such study’s thin layers of highly porous
silicon or poly crystalline silicon nano meter size grain could dissolve completely away in
simulated human plasma. Drug release kinetics can be controlled by altering the pore size
and particle size.

Keywords: Porous silicon, nanoparticles, nanotechnology.

*Corresponding Author
E-mail: berabinoy17@gmail.com

INTRODUCTION polymeric nanoparticles have been used.

In recent days, nanotechnology has its
great aspects. Nanotechnology is related
with the materials and devices in the range
of the nanometer or one billionth of a
meter. Nano particles [1-4] are being
increasingly investigated in industry and
academic research due to their widespread
applications in all the scientific and
production fields. In particular there is an
increasing interest in designing and
developing materials suitable as nano
carriers in controlled drug delivery,
biological imaging and selective treatment
of severe diseases. Now a days, there are
many significant advances in drug delivery
systems. Several types of organic systems
such as miscelles, liposome’s and
Nanoparticles from some metal or metallic
compounds are also used in several
research work for drug delivery purposes.
But there are some drawbacks and
limitations including poor thermal and
chemical stability and rapid elimination by
the immune system for these particles.
Metal particles are found toxic in nature,
so it can be very harmful to insert these
particles into body as a drug delivery agent
because it can introduce some side-effects.
On the other hand, the silica or porous
silica nanoparticles offer huge advantages
and overcomes the drawbacks. The silica
is highly bio-compatible and stable in
nature. It shows its biocompatibility and
biodegradability [5-9] property at the same

IJAN (2019) 14-18 © JournalsPub 2019. All Rights Reserved Page 14

Porous Silicon and its Nanoparticles: A Theoretical Study
time. Some traces of silica are found inside
the human body, so it can be said that it
has a great compatibility with the human
body. The bioactive molecules are easily
encapsulated within silica particles. In the
recent discovery, it has also established
that among other nanoparticles, silica and
silicon nanoparticles have been reviewed
both for specific aim such as single
molecular detection or intra cellular
imaging or with many functionalities.
Comparing to the silica particles, porous
silicon nanoparticles posses high surface
area and its honeycomb like structure is
very attractive feature for loading drugs
for drug delivery purposes. Porous silicon
is a form of chemical element silicon that
has introduced nano porous hold in its
microstructures. Porous silicon [10-14]
nanoparticles are attractive carrier for
targeted drug delivery in nano medicine.
For in-vivo applications, the bio-
degradation property of porous silicon
provides a pathway for their safe
clearance from body. Particle size of 80-
120 nm are of interest as they are
important for cancer therapy. Porous
silicon also demonstrates optical
properties that provides the bases for a
wide variety of potential devices. Porous
silicon is an attractive candidate because
the porosity and average pore size can be
readily tuned by adjustment of processing
conditions. This feature allows one to use
thousands of particles together each with
its own tag for high sensitivity chemical
or biological sensing.
Porous silicon layers can be prepared by
reaction induced vapour phase strain etch
technique. RIVPSE is a simple technique
which does not require any special
technical equipment like anodization cell,
external current source etc. therefore it
significantly reduces the fabrication cost of
porous silicon films. The porous silicon
particles can be fabricated by separating
the porous silicon film and then break it
IJAN (2019) 14-18 © JournalsPub 2019. All Rights Reserved
Binoy Bera
into nano particles using ultra-sonic
sonicator. After transforming the film into
particles, then the particles are dissolved in
de-ionized water. The particle size of the
porous silicon is measured by using dynamic
light scattering instrument. Porous silicon
was discovered by Uhlir in 1956 when
performing electrochemical etching of
silicon. In 1990, Canham showed that certain
porous silicon materials can have large
photoluminescence efficiency at room
temperature in the visible: a unexpected
result, since the photoluminescence effect of
bulk silicon is not shown due to its indirect
energy band gap and short non-radiative
lifetime. The reason of this was the partial
dissolution of silicon, which causes i) the
formation of small silicon nanocrystals in the
porous silicon material; ii) the reduction of
the effective refractive index of porous silicon
with respect to silicon, and hence an
increased light extraction efficiency from
porous silicon; and iii) the spatial
confinement of the ex-cited carriers in small
silicon regions where non-radiative
recombination centres are mostly absent. In
general, porous silicon is an interconnected
network of air holes in silicon. Porous silicon
is classified according to the pore diameter,
which can vary from a few nanometres to a
few microns depending on the formation
mechanisms. Furthermore, porosity is the
ratio of the total pore volume to the apparent
volume. Pores can be of three types;1)
micropores, 2) mesopores, 3) macropores.
FABRICATION OF POROUS
SILICON
Porous silicon can be fabricated by using
numerous process such as anodization,
strain etch, metal assisted strain etch
process, vapour phase strain etch process.
One of the most important advantages of
porous silicon is easy and simple
preparation. At first by Uhril and Turner,
lately by Canham PS mainly obtained by
electrochemical etching of silicon surface.
Anodization is an electrochemical method
Page 15

for removing a controlled amount of
silicon by low temperature and damage
free process. This technique is most
popular for growing PS for electrical
characterization and capacitor application.
This technique gives a variety of thickness
and pore size of PS. The process is
performed by placing a silicon substrate in
a special type of cell made of Teflon
where the front surface of silicon is
exposed to the electrolyte of HF based
solution and back surface is connected to
positive terminal of power supply serving
as anode contact. Nobel metal like
platinum is connected to the negative
terminal of power the supply to serve as
the cathode contact. The variety of pore
size can be formed by varying the
anodization parameters like anodization
current density, doping density of
substrate, etching time. The porosity [15]
of the PS formed at the pore tips is
proportional to the current density through
the cell at that time. Since the porosity at a
given depth is controlled by
electrochemical current density, dynamic
control of current during the etch can
produce porosity gradients or alternating
layers of variety porosity within the film.
The morphology of porous silicon matrix
that remains after electrochemical etching
is not only dependent on current density
and substrate doping, but is also affected
by the HF electrolyte concentration, the
duration of the etch, temperature, and
ambient lighting conditions. In this
process, initiation of pore formation is
carried out at surface defects like surface
vacancies, kink sites etc on silicon surface.
The chemical activity at these surface
defects is higher than that of the rest of the
surface. Therefore, the dissolution rate is
higher than the defect free sites of silicon
surface when it is subjected to electrolytic
reactions. The dissolution rate at the
surface defects leads to formation of very
small pits. The increased current density
inside the pits leads to cylindrical pores.
The following is the anodic reaction that
IJAN (2019) 14-18 © JournalsPub 2019. All Rights Reserved
International Journal of Applied Nanotechnology
eISSN: 2455-8524 (Online)
Vol. 5: Issue 1
www.journalspub.com
takes place between silicon and HF. The
exact dissolution chemistries of silicon
involve availability of holes that are
required in the initial steps for both
electropolishing and the pore formation.
Although anodization process offers
advantages like uniform porosity,
flexibility of pore formation, it still
possesses some potential drawbacks. Some
disadvantages of this process are setup
costs of an anodization cell, requirement of
constant current source, and its inability of
batch processing. On the other hand, strain
etch process is contrast to the anodization
process has simple setup, the required
chemicals for growth of porous silicon can
be readily procured, formation of porous
structure can be done in a batch to reduce
the formation cost and also very thin PS
layer can be obtained. This process
requires dipping the silicon sample in a
hydrofluoric acid, nitric acid, water
solution for 3-15 minutes. Different PS
morphological structures can be produced
by varying the chemical etchant
composition and etch duration. Although
strain etch process is a pure chemical
process without any need of chemical bias,
it still has some serious disadvantage. Wet
etched PS layers have lack of uniformity
and homogeneity due to complete
immersion into solution. Hydrogen
evolution during reaction form bubbles
and stick on the silicon surface in pure
aqueous solution. Two factors (bubbles
formation and low wettability) are reported
for poor uniformity of PS films [16-19].
Absolute ethanol is usually added into the
aqueous solution for hydrogen bubbles
removal to improve lateral homogeneity
and uniformity of PS layers. The PS
formation process does not start
instantaneously but requires some
incubation period that is sufficient enough
to form oxidized pores with impurities
incorporated in it. Other modified strain
etch process like metal assisted and vapour
phase strain etch process are quite
interesting. In metal assisted strain etch
Page 16
Porous Silicon and its Nanoparticles: A Theoretical Study
process porous silicon structures can be
formed in chemical etching solution of HF
and oxidizing species by depositing metal
films such as aluminium on silicon
substrates as a catalyst of the strain etch
process. In vapour phase strain etch
process, instead of immersing the silicon
substrate into the solution, silicon substrate
is exposed to the acid vapours to obtain the
PS structures.
FABRICATION OF POROUS
SILICON NANOPARTICLES
Porous silicon nanoparticle can be
fabricated by using electrochemical cell
setup. Here we have proposed a new and
cost consuming approach for synthesizing
porous silicon particles. In this method,
first porous silicon layers are prepared by
using RIVPSE method. Then porous
silicon layers can be lifted off by using a
micro razor. After lifting off the porous
silicon film, it is filtered and dissolve in
de-ionized water. Using ultra-sound
sonication bath, the particles are grinded
for 6-8 hrs until it gets dissolved in Di-
water completely.
STUDY THE CHARACTERIZATION
OF POROUS SILICON AND ITS
NANOPARTICLES SIZE
The surface analysis includes
morphological characterization of porous
silicon layer can be done by using
scanning electron microscopy. Optical
properties can be done by using UV-Vis
analysis. From there band gap can be
calculated using tauc plot. Furthermore,
high resolution transmission electron
microscopy, X-ray diffraction can be done
for characterizing the porous silicon.
Porous silicon nanoparticle can be measure
by using dynamic light scattering method.
CONCLUSIONS
Particle sizing is a very important factor in
the field of material science, bio-medical,
electronics and optoelectronics etc. By
tuning the pore sizes of porous silicon
IJAN (2019) 14-18 © JournalsPub 2019. All Rights Reserved
Binoy Bera
different size of porous particles can be
gained. By dynamic light scattering, the
quality of the sample can be observed i.e.
whether the sample is poly dispersed or mono
dispersed. From there the idea about the
shape, size and mass of the particle can be
obtained. To get a good quality nano particle
sample the filtration should be done very
importantly, so that the contaminants would
get eliminated. UV-Vis spectroscopy of
particles gives us an idea about optical
properties like absorbance, reflectance,
scattering and aggregation as well as the size
of the particle.
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Theoretical Study. International Journal of Applied Nanotechnology.
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