Determination of porous silicon growth profiles in the presence of non-uniform doping by means of a switching current method

Porous silicon is an interesting material with technological applications in optoelectronics, micromachining, biomedicine, and others. In this work an original switching current method is proposed for the determination, with one only experiment, of the temporal evolution profiles of porous silicon layers during the anodization process. This technique has proved to be a valuable tool for testing and improving a two-dimensional macroscopic simulator implemented for the prediction of porous silicon formation in samples with arbitrary doping profiles. Experimental results are presented and discussed, along with the principle of the simulator and the simulation results.