Light Emitting Micropatterns of Porous Si Created at Surface Defects

We report a principle that allows one to write visible light emitting silicon patterns of arbitrary shape down to the submicrometer scale. We demonstrate that porous Si growth can electrochemically be initiated preferentially at surface defects created in an n-type Si substrate by Si⁺⁺ focused ion beam bombardment. For n-type material in the dark, the electrochemical pore formation potential (Schottky barrier breakdown voltage) is significantly lower at the implanted locations than for an unimplanted surface. This difference in the threshold voltages is exploited to achieve the selectivity of the pore formation process.