Passivation of porous silicon by wet thermal oxidation

A wet thermal oxidation method is proposed to passivate the electrochemically etched porous silicon. Bright and stable photoluminescence is achieved by wet oxidation at relatively low temperatures of 400–500 °C. The Fourier transform infrared absorption shows that the formation of SiH(O3), SiH(SiO2), SiH2(O2) bonds may be responsible to the stabilization of luminescence under the laser illumination.