This indicates an increase in the expansion of the PSi lattice in the normal direction to the Si-substrate,
implying a ~26% incremental increase in the out-of-plane tensile strain from 3.5 × 10−4 to 4.6 × 10−4, as depicted by the semi-solid squares in Figure 4. Figure 4 Comparison between the out-of-plane strain values in as-etched (semi-solid) and annealed (solid) monolayers of PSi. Both showing an increasing strain with thickness, but with opposite signs. A similar set of samples with PSi monolayers were annealed for 10 min this website in H2-ambient at 1,130°C. As shown in Figure 4, the strain increases with increasing thickness of the annealed PSi monolayer. This trend is identical to that of the as-etched case, but with an opposite sign, i.e., compressive strain. In fact, the increase in the thickness of the annealed monolayer of PSi from 350 to 1,700 nm resulted in ~88% incremental increase in the out-of-plane strain from 0.2 × 10−4 to 1.6 × 10−4, as depicted in Figure 4 by the solid squares. Two effects are thus simultaneously occurring for the PSi upon annealing,
strain conversion from tensile to compressive and strain reduction. It is well known that the PSi lattice mismatch parameter is very sensitive to the chemical state of PSi internal surface [10, 11]. The as-etched sample contains a high density of adsorbed hydrogen on its pore walls, which Selleckchem U0126 causes in-plane compressive stress on the pore side walls. That stress leads to out-of-plane expansion of the PSi lattice, resulting in the monitored out-of-plane tensile strain [10]. Likewise, desorption of hydrogen could be the main source of strain conversion. As proposed by Sugiyama et al., as the sample is annealed, most of this hydrogen is desorbed. This desorption leads to a considerable reduction in the in-plane compressive stress, leading to the relaxation of the lattice expansion in the in-plane direction and, conversely, to an out-of-plane compressive strain. Moreover, according to Chelyadinsky et al. [11], a disordered thin film of amorphous silicon, which
conformably covers the pore wall, is also present and a main reason for the lattice deformation. In their work, they showed that the recrystallization of this amorphous silicon Florfenicol film, in addition to the gas desorption in the higher temperature of vacuum annealing at 800°C, would lead to the relaxation of the PSi lattice parameter to the value of monocrystalline Si [11]. However, the measurements in [10, 11] were performed on samples annealed in vacuum, while our case is in H2 ambient, and we would thus expect here some H-termination to the pore side walls during cooling down below the desorption temperature of Si-H x bonds. We can speculate that during the cooling down, the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of PSi is higher than that of Si, which leads to a faster in-plane contraction of the PSi layer compared to bulk Si.