A Model for the Optical Absorption in Pororus Silicon

Shouvik Datta, K. L. Narasimhan

Published 1999-02-20Version 1

In this paper, we report on the optical absorption in porous silicon. We model the absorption process assuming that porous silicon is a pseudo 1D material system having a distribution of band gaps. We show that in order to explain the absorption we specifically need to invoke - (a) k is not conserved in optical transitions, (b) the oscillator strength of these transitions depends on the size of the nanostructure in which absorption takes place and (c) the distribution of band gaps significantly influences the optical absorption. We also show that it is not possible to extract the band gap of porous silicon from a plot of $\sqrt{\alpha\hbar\omega}$ vs $\hbar\omega$.