Experiments and Monte Carlo simulations on the recombination dynamics in porous silicon

We present a detailed study of the time-resolved photo-luminescence of porous Silicon samples with different porosities providing clear evidence of anomalous relaxation behaviour of the luminescence, which follows stretched exponential decay for a variety of experimental conditions. In addition, a numerical study of the underlying transport behaviour in these disordered materials by means of Monte-Carlo simulations has been performed. Nanometer sized particles, characterised by a distribution of radiative and non-radiative recombination times, are randomly placed at the sites of a cubic lattice forming a single three dimensional percolation cluster. Charge carriers are allowed to hop between nearest-neighbour occupied sites. The competing effect between radiative and non-radiative transitions in a single nanometer particle, as well as the effects of geometrical constraints on transport due to the complex topology, are discussed and compared to experiments.