Porous silicon is a high surface area substrate that may prove useful for applications in chemical sensing and catalysis.  The primary thrust of our research program focuses on the oxidative degradation of porous silicon under a range of chemically demanding environments.  The majority of this work to date has studied the degradation of porous silicon in aqueous environments, such as simulated biological fluids.  For catalytic roles in organic synthesis, however, knowledge of porous silicon degradation in organic solvents will prove valuable.  Previous experiments in our laboratory revealed that certain organic solvents, such as dimethyl sulfoxide and tetrahydrofuan, significantly oxidize hydride-terminated porous silicon, whereas hexanes, dichloromethane, and toluene do not.  The undergraduate research project presented here extends this work to include more careful analysis using transmission-mode, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to monitor oxidative degradation of porous silicon immersed in various organic solvents.

Oxidation of porous silicon in organic solvents: FTIR and SEM analysis

239th National Meeting (2010)

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