Chapter Twenty Five. Porous Silicon Based MEMS
25.1. Porous Silicon Background
Porous silicon (PS) was first discovered by accident in 1956 by Uhlir Jr. and Ingeborg at the Bell laboratories when developing surface-polishing procedures for silicon and germanium wafers [1]. This early work was considered a failure as it was found that the silicon was not removed in a layer-by-layer fashion. Rather, a sponge-like structure formed at the silicon surface. Depending on preparation conditions, pore diameters ranged from a few nanometers up to about one micrometer.
A first application of PS was in the field of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology [2]. There, Si wafers were made porous at the top surface and epitaxial silicon was grown on top of the ...
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