Characterization of anodic silicon oxide thin films with non-invasive techniques

In this work the mechanical effects and the mirage associated with the formation and dissolution of Si oxide films during p-Si electrochemical oscillations are shown and analyzed. The experiments reported here describe the application of the bending beam method (BBM) and probe beam deflection (PBD) technique for the in situ characterization of such Si oxide films. The most relevant feature of the BBM experiments was the detection of a sudden increase of the electrode curvature corresponding to the onset of SiOx formation. PBD results showed that the deflection angle can be correlated with the variation of SiOx dissolution rate in the regime of galvanostatic oscillations.