Electron beam irradiation of porous silicon for application in micromachining and sensing

We have studied the effect of the electron beam (EB) irradiation on porous silicon (PS), in order to find new possibilities for the local modification of the material at the submicrometer scale. The interaction be- tween the accelerated electrons and PS has been investigated by means of two main techniques: infrared spectroscopy and profilometric measurements. All the results show that a strong increase of reactivity is induced on PS surface under exposure to the EB, due to the hydrogen desorption provoked by the incident electrons. We demonstrate that this phenomenon can be exploited for both the lateral structuring and the local functionalization of PS, at the submicrometer scale, depending on the different treatments applied to the samples after the EB bombardment.