Analysis of Publications on Porous Silicon: From Photoluminescence to Biology

The issue of porous silicon has attracted much research during last seven years due to perspectives of the formation of all-silicon optoelectronic devices (first of all—LEDs). The work presents a bibliographic analysis of publications made during the period from 1990 (when red-light photoluminescence from porous silicon was first reported by Dr. L. Canham) to the present time in order to reveal the existing tendencies of the researches (what particular field attracts the most research, who is the most fruitful in publishing articles related to porous silicon, etc.). The contributions of different research centres and countries are also evaluated. Personal contributions of leading researchers are disclosed and their citation ranking is given. It is concluded that emerging applications of porous silicon in micro-machining, chemical and biological monitoring will stimulate further activities in studying the mechanism of porous silicon growth and its physical and chemical properties.