Erbium Plating on Nanostructured Silicon Using Immersion Technique

The effects of immersion time and quantity of Erbium plated on Nanostructured Silicon (NSi) have been studied. Nanostructured Silicon was prepared by electrochemical method with an electrolyte composed of Hydrofluoric acid and Ethanol. The Erbium plating process was carried out by immersion technique with electrolyte composed of ErCl3 and Ethanol. The photoluminescence (PL) effect on NSi samples have been studied and shows a PL intensity is improves at certain immersion time and the PL peak shifts to the blue luminescence. The presence of Erbium conformed by X‐ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) was also performed to study the chemical functional group changes after the plating process. The possible mechanism of the effects will be discussed in this paper.