Distinguishing the effect of surface passivation from the effect of size on the photonic and electronic behavior of porous silicon

CF4 plasma-passivation enhanced size dependence of the blueshift in photoemission and photoabsorption, E2p-level shift, and band-gap expansion of porous silicon has been measured and analyzed numerically based on the recent “bond order-length-strength” correlation [C. Q. Sun, Phys. Rev. B 69, 045105 (2004)]. Matching predictions to the measurements conducted before and after fluorination reveals that fluorination further enhances both the crystal binding intensity that determines the band gap and core level shift and the electron-phonon coupling that contributes to the energies of photoemission and photoabsorption. This approach enables us to discriminate the effect of surface-bond contraction from the effect of surface-bond nature alteration on the unusual behavior of photons, phonons, and electrons in nanosolid Si. © 2004 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.1766086]