Analysis of publications on porous silicon: From photoluminescence to biology

The issue of porous silicon has attracted much research during last seven y ears due to perspectives of the formation of all-silicon optoelectronic dev ices (first of all-LEDs). The work presents a bibliographic analysis of pub lications made during the period from 1990 (when red-light photoluminescenc e from porous silicon was first reported by Dr. L. Canham) to the present t ime in order to reveal the existing tendencies of the researches (what part icular field attracts the most research, who is the most fruitful in publis hing articles related to porous silicon, etc.). The contributions of differ ent research centres and countries are also evaluated. Personal contributio ns of leading researchers are disclosed and their citation ranking is given . It is concluded that emerging applications of porous silicon in micro-mac hining, chemical and biological monitoring will stimulate further activitie s in studying the mechanism of porous silicon growth and its physical and c hemical properties.