The impact of drying phenomena and heat treatment on the structure of porous silicon

Porous silicon (PS) has received a great deal of attention due to its light emitting properties. This characteristic has led to a wide range of applications (optoelectronic devices, physical and chemical sensors, solar cells??). Indeed, this material is a good candidate for improving the ratio quality/price of solar cells. Its fabrication needs anodisation of single crystalline silicon in a mixture of HF/methanol solution. In order to simulate the different steps needed to ??develop?? the solar cells, PS layers (single or two layers) were subjected to different annealing. In this article, we discuss the influence of drying and annealing on the morphology of PS. SEM observations and gravimetric measurements are reported.