About This Training Program

This training program is a 6-8 weeks program that allows undergraduate students from material
science or electronics background to work in NOR Lab (Nano-optoelectronics Laboratory) USM,
under the supervision of NOR lab research lecturers. This program is especially useful for applied
physics and engineering students as it provides a hands on experience corresponds to their studies.
Students are given the opportunity to handle NOR lab equipment and work on their respective
projects during the period of the training.

A certification from the School of Physics, USM will be honored to those who participated in this
training program. A report of their work during the training period is to be graded by their respective
supervisor.

The objectives of this training program are

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To allow students to expose themselves to real research work environment and hone their
experiment handling skills.
To give the students and opportunity to apply their knowledge learned in their studies and
plunge further to their respective interested field.
To give the students a rare opportunity to collaborate and work with post graduate students
with world class research grade equipment and materials.

After this training program, students are expected to be more skilled in handling experiments and
equipment. This is a great advantage for future career prosperity in research, laboratory, industry
and also pursuing further studies.

Suggestions
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Give this training program a proper name.

Administration, talk to the dean and make this program as a real course with units.
Marketing, NOR lab lecturers give presentation about this training program to first year
students during orientation week. *if done quickly can catch up with this new semester*
Management, form teams with post-grad students and assign them to groups of training
students, with respective projects and assignments.

Training Report
During this 6 weeks of training, Ive been assigned to 2 projects:
i)
ii)

To produce and study the surface morphology of porous silicon.

To produce a simple p-n junction by the fabrication process.

Porous Silicon
Porous silicon (p-Si) is a form of the chemical element silicon that has introduced nano-porous holes
in its microstructure, rendering a large surface to volume ratio in the order of 500 m2/cm3. Porous
silicon can be fabricated by 2 means, dry etching and wet etching. Dry etching refers to the removal
of material, typically a masked pattern of semiconductor material, by exposing the material to a
bombardment of ions. Wet etching use liquid-phase etchants. The wafer can be immersed in a bath
of etchant, which must be agitated to achieve good process control.