Monte Carlo determination of crystallite size of porous silicon from x-ray line broadening

The nanometric structure of porous silicon makes this material very suitable for its use in many different fields, including optoelectronics and biological applications. Porous silicon can be basically described as an amorphous matrix in which silicon nanocrystals are embedded. In the present work, the distribution in size of the Si grains that compose porous silicon as a function of porosity was determined based on x-ray line broadening. For this purpose, a Monte Carlo interference-function-fitting algorithm was used. The main advantage of this method is that it gives the complete particle size distribution and not just averaged values. The results from the distribution in size of porous silicon were fitted to a log normal distribution and were correlated with the corresponding photoluminescent spectra.