Electrical Properties of Meso-Porous Silicon: From a Surface Effect to Coulomb Blockade and More

Since the Volker Lehmann’s paper “Resistivity of Porous Silicon: a surface effect” published in 1995, a great deal of effort has been produced in understanding the basic mechanisms ruling the electron transport in Si mesostructures and how these phenomena are affected by external environment. After more than 10 years, new experimental evidences and physical insights have been obtained, like gas sensitivity, chemisorptions phenomena, Coulomb blockade and glassy dynamics at room temperature, but reading that former paper, the feeling of an extraordinary comprehension and intuition of the physical phenomena occurring in this fascinating material is continuously accompanying the reader. A review of these major results in studying electronic transport in mesoporous silicon will be reported, starting from the still valid intuitions of Volker Lehmann in his paper.