Brillouin spectroscopic studies of porous semiconductor films and related systems

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Porous semiconductor films are one of today's most fundamentally fascinating and technologically promising materials classes with potential and realized applications in fields such as photonics and biomaterials technology. Exploration and characterization of the properties of porous semiconductor films is, however, in its infancy, due mainly to their novelty and the limited number of techniques capable of probing the fragile nanostructure.  In particular, there have been few studies of elastic wave propagation in these systems and the relationships between the elastic properties and other system parameters have yet to be established.  Knowledge of the elastic properties of porous semiconductors is also important for device applications.  It has been proposed, for example, that Young's modulus of porous Si be tuned by varying the porosity to match that of cortical or cancellous bone thereby enabling its use as a bone-building scaffold. The research program that I plan to pursue at Memorial University will use Brillouin spectroscopy to probe the elastic properties of porous semiconductor films and related systems and, in conjunction with complementary laser spectroscopy studies, will facilitate discovery and quantification of the relationships between these properties and the structural and optical properties of these systems. The proposed research is an extension of my earlier work on porous semiconductors via laser spectroscopy techniques and levers expertise in device fabrication and materials characterization gained during employment with Nortel and in porous semiconductor film synthesis at Memorial University.  Systems of particular interest include porous Si multilayers, carbon nanotube arrays and nanocolumnar porous SiC films.