Porous silicon dielectric relaxation

Non-Debye dielectric relaxation in porous systems is another example of the dynamic behavior of complex systems on the mesoscale. The dielectric properties of various complex multiphase systems (borosilicate porous glasses [153-156], sol-gel glasses [157,158], zeolites [159], and porous silicon [160,161]) were studied and analyzed recently in terms of cooperative dynamics. The dielectric response in porous systems will be considered here in detail using two quite different types of materials, namely, porous glasses and porous silicon. 

Non-Debye dielectric relaxation was also observed in porous silicon (PS) [25,160,161], PS has attracted much attention recently, mainly due to its interesting optical and electro-optical properties that can be utilized for device applications [164,165], So far, most of the activity in this field has focused on the intense visible photoluminescence (PL) from nano-PS and the underlying physical mechanism that is responsible for the generation of light. In addition, transport and dielectric relaxation phenomena in PS have also attracted... 

Thus, the non-Debye dielectric behavior in silica glasses and PS is similar. These systems exhibit an intermediate temperature percolation process associated with the transfer of the electric excitations through the random structures of fractal paths. It was shown that at the mesoscale range the fractal dimension of the complex material morphology (Dr for porous glasses and porous silicon) coincides with the fractal dimension Dp of the path structure. This value can be obtained by fitting the experimental DCF to the stretched-exponential relaxation law (64). 

Axelrod E, Givant A, Shappir J, Feldman Y, Saar A (2002) Dielectric relaxation and transport in porous silicon. Phys Rev B 65 165-429... 

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