Sintering of porous silicon

In this paper we study the dynamics of pore coarsening in porous silicon during annealing. We model the sintering of pores with two-dimensional and three-dimensional simulations. We compare our simulations with transmission and scanning electron micrographs of experimentally annealed porous silicon samples. Simulations and experiments yield lognormally distributed pore sizes. The quantitative agreement between simulation and experiment shows that minimization of the inner surface energy is the driving force for morphological changes in PS during annealing. Surface diffusion is the dominant mechanism in the reorganization of Si-atoms in PS.