Optimising energetic porous silicon performance

Abstract

With the scaling down of integrated circuit silicon technology feature sizes, more functionality can be integrated onto a silicon chip, leading to the “More than Moore” concept. The porous silicon technology opened the door to several new novel applications, one of which is porous silicon being used as an energetic material. Several applications in the field of sensors and actuators are envisaged and the aim of this paper is to identify some of the optimal porous silicon and oxidiser parameters for high energy output. Of importance is the porosity and pore size of the porous silicon, as well as the type of oxidiser and filling of the pores with the oxidiser. The oxidiser NaClO4 was found to be the most energetic of the three oxidisers (Gd(NO 3 ) 3 , S and NaClO 4 ) investigated. Of more importance, it was found that for the most energetic reaction, the optimal pore size should be in the range 3 to 4 nm.