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Wafers of silicon and compound semiconductors are nanostructured by using electrochemical or chemical etching (stain etching) in etching cell with electrolyte kept by capillary forces. Atomic force microscopy, infrared spectroscopy and Raman scattering methods reveale nanoporous and nanocrystalline structure of the treated surfaces. The formed porous semiconductors demonstrate efficient photoluminescence, which is controlled by etching parameters, i.e. current density, electrolyte content, etc. These results indicate good prospects of the employed capillary-cell method for preparing nanostructured porous materials with desired structure and optical properties.

We present a model of spatial distribution of electrons, holes, clusters of intrinsic and admixtures (defects of different types) in nanostructured semiconductor thin films. We obtain intermittent, heterogeneous distributions of concentration typical for images of surfaces obtained by scanning tunneling microscopy, atomic-force microscopy and electron microscopy by numerical analyses.[DOI: 10.1380/ejssnt.2007.132]