An in-house approach for fabrication of silicon nanowire arrays using electroless metal deposition and etching method

In this work, a simple and cost effective in-house process has been developed by combining the ultrasonication bath and electroless metal deposition and etching (EMDE) technique for the growth of vertically oriented, single-crystalline, silicon nanowire (SiNW) arrays with uniform coverage over the whole surface area of the wafer without using any template. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis shows the uniformity in distribution of SiNW arrays by the proposed method. The samples with as-grown SiNW arrays appear to be blackish in colour and provide a very low reflectance of less than 0.15% in the wavelength range of 300-900 nm. This implies that the as-grown SiNW arrays can be used as the antireflection coating-layer in SiNW-based solar cells and photodetector devices. The compatibility of these Si nanostructures with the well-matured Si-based CMOS technology also assure their application in the development of future generation nanoelectronic and nano-optoelectronic devices.