The ability of porous silicon (pSi) to maintain oxidation reactions that lead to combustion and explosion [1, 2] allows treating it as a component of high-energy fuels. In work [3] an explosive system is described, where at cryogenic temperatures (4.2–90 K) the interacting atoms are in contact on an atomic scale: hydrogenated porous silicon whose pores are filled by liquid or condensed oxygen. By virtue of this, it is of interest to study the interaction of pSi with molecular oxygen–the most wide-spread oxidizer in nature.

A pSi layer was formed on 100-mm-diameter and 0.45-mm-thick wafers of single-crystal silicon with hollow conductance. The wafers had specific resistance OF 12 Ω· cm2 (KDB-12) and crystallographic orientation {100} and were covered by an aluminum layer on their backside. The pSi layer formation occurred in AN electrolyte based on hydrofluoric acid (HF), with a system of nanosized channels oriented mainly deep into the wafer being formed in the single crystal and having a maximum size distribution of pores in the range of 5–10 nm. The mean characteristics of the pSi samples studied in eight regimes of their formation (further on the text-Conditions) are listed in Table 1.