New Approaches Toward the Formation of Silicon-Carbon Bonds on Porous Silicon

Porous silicon is a material of intense technological and fundamental interest, due to its high surface area, quantum confinement effects, light emission, and complex nanoscale architecture. There is a strong desire to be able to control the surface properties of this versatile material at will through functionalization with monolayers bound through the stable silicon-carbon bond. Incredibly, the surface chemistry of porous silicon is often very different from that of a silicon-based molecule, or a flat surface, due to interesting electronic effects resulting from both the semiconducting and nanoscale characteristics of the material. Recent results outlining the rapid progress of silicon-carbon bond formation on porous silicon surfaces will be described.