Project Information per year
2008 - 2007 -2006 - 2005 - 2004

PROJECT III.1
POROUS SILICON TECHNOLOGY and APPLICATIONS

Project leader: A. G. Nassiopoulou
Other key researchers: H. Contopanagos, G. Kaltsas
Post-doctoral scientist: D. Pagonis
Phd students: F. Zacharatos, A. Petropoulos

Funding

- EU Marie Curie/ ‘’RF on porous’’, re-integration grant, Contract N0 016142, 29/7/2005-28/7/2007
- Contract with the National Research Agency-Cyprus, Photothermal analysis, 1/7/2004-30/6/2006
- Contract with the company Unilever UK, Flow system for Unilever, 1/12/2005-31/5/2007
- Contract with the company ST Microelectronics SA France, RF-on-porous, 30/7/2005-30/7/2008

Research orientation

- Porous silicon material development: mesoporous and macroporous silicon
- Development of silicon micromachining technologies using porous silicon
- Application in flow sensors, accelerometers, microfluidic devices and on-chip integration of RF components.

a) Porous silicon technology for sensors
A big effort has been devoted the last years at IMEL in developing materials and enabling technologies for application in sensors. One such material platform with important potential for applications in different sensor devices, microfluidics, lab-on-chip, integration of passives on silicon etc. is porous silicon technology.

Either nanostructured mesoporous or macroporous silicon are grown at IMEL. Mesoporous silicon is very appropriate for use as micro-plate for local thermal or electrical (dc, RF) isolation on a silicon substrate. Macroporous silicon is developed for use in photonics, via technology, device cooling and particle filtering.

Different technologies based on porous silicon are available at IMEL, including:
- Proprietary micromachining techniques based on the use of porous silicon as a sacrificial layer for the fabrication of free standing membranes, bridges and cantilevers on a silicon substrate
- Technologies using porous silicon for local thermal or RF isolation on a silicon wafer, or using porous silicon as a matrix for the deposition of catalytic materials for use in chemical sensors

b) RF isolation by porous silicon micro-plates on a silicon substrate
This activity is more recent at IMEL. The overall objective is:
• to explore and extend porous silicon technology into the domain of CMOS-compatible integrated RF systems for use in systems-on-chip and
• to improve the performance of currently integrated analog CMOS components by above technology transfer and related optimization of design methodologies.