LUMINESCENCE DECAY OF POROUS SILICON

The luminescence decay pattern of porous silicon samples prepared by electrochemical etching is characterised experimentally by a non-exponential profile, a strong dependence on temperature and an absence of spectral diffusion. We describe this luminescence as carrier-hopping-assisted recombination. Following the correlation function approach to non-dispersive transport developed by Scher and co-workers [Physics Today 41 (1991) 26], we suggest a simple derivation of analytical functions which accurately describes the anomalous luminescence decay of porous silicon, and show that this model includes exponential and Kohlrausch [Pogg. Ann. Phys. 119 (1863) 352] (stretched-exponential) relaxations as special cases.