Nanoporous silicon optical waveguides, which serve as the basic foundation for porous silicon based biochemical sensors, have been fabricated by electrochemical etching and laser local oxidation. By optimizing the porous silicon layers, laser writing power and speed, acceptable optical losses have been achieved. Loss mechanisms include scattering, intrinsic absorption, coupling loss at the fibe...

Porous silicon is an excellent material for biosensing because of its large surface area and ability to filter out large contaminant species. In order to characterize the sensitivity of porous silicon based biosensors for biomolecules of different sizes, a mesoporous silicon waveguide with average pore diameter of 20 nm is used to detect single strand DNA oligos with different numbers of base p...

Initial stages of Cu immersion deposition in the presence of hydrofluoric acid on bulk and porous silicon were studied. Cu was found to deposit both on bulk and porous silicon as a layer of nanoparticles which grew according to the Volmer-Weber mechanism. It was revealed that at the initial stages of immersion deposition, Cu nanoparticles consisted of crystals with a maximum size of 10 nm and i...

Porous silicon has been prepared using a vapor-etching based technique on a commercial silicon powder. Strong visible emission was observed in all samples. Obtained silicon powder with a thin porous layer at the surface was subjected to a photo-thermal annealing at different temperatures under oxygen atmosphere followed by a chemical treatment. Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectro...

Porous silicon seems to be an appropriate material platform for the development of high-sensitivity and low-cost optical sensors, as their porous nature increases the interaction with the target substances, and their fabrication process is very simple and inexpensive. In this paper, we present the experimental development of a porous silicon microcavity sensor and its use for real-time in-flow ...

Passivation of porous silicon sensors is a critical issue for achieving high sensitivity and selectivity toward biomolecule targets that may be detected in complex physiologic solution. Without appropriate passivation, degradation of the porous silicon matrix inhibits the repeatability of optical measurements and limits applications in complex media. In this work, we present a method for stabil...

Fluorescence imaging is one of the most versatile and widely used visualization methods in biomedical research. However, tissue autofluorescence is a major obstacle confounding interpretation of in vivo fluorescence images. The unusually long emission lifetime (5-13 μs) of photoluminescent porous silicon nanoparticles can allow the time-gated imaging of tissues in vivo, completely eliminating s...

Miniaturization and silicon integration of micro enzyme reactors for applications in micro total analysis systems (μTASs) require new methods to achieve structures with a large surface area onto which the enzyme can be coupled. This paper describes a method to accomplish a highly efficient silicon microstructured enzyme reactor utilizing porous silicon as the carrier matrix. The enzyme activity...

In the last three years, the possibility of light generation and/or amplification in silicon, based on Raman emission, has achieved significant results. However, limitations inherent to the physics of silicon have also been pointed out. One possible option to overcome these limitations is to consider low dimensional silicon. In this paper, an approach based on Raman scattering in porous silicon...

In the last three years, the possibility of light generation and/or amplification in silicon, based on Raman emission, has achieved significant results. However, limitations inherent to the physics of silicon have been pointed out, too. In order to overcome these limitations, a possible option is to consider low dimensional silicon. In this paper, an approach based on Raman scattering in porous...