Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2011
PL decay in a time scale of ms for fresh porous Si surfaces was investigated for different atmospheres and excitation intensities to clarify the mechanism of the PL decay. The PL excitation intensity and atmosphere were found to affect the decay of PL, which was due to laser enhanced oxidation.
Locally PL excited areas of porous Si were also found to be etched in a HF solution. Maskless patterning using this effect could be performed by a scan of a focused laser beam followed by HF etching.